Day 22 (b-day fits, mount rushmore, and new friends)

Day 22

After leaving Beaver campsite is Custer, South Dakota

we were headed to Rapid City, SD to visit Fort Hays.

There we had Buffalo Burgers for lunch on hand made tin plates.

(yuck!)

Daddy and kids liked it, maybe it was just because it was in my head that I was eating buffalo meat?

Idk?

I had a couple bites and gave the rest to Austin.

(who by the way is eating like a big buffalo himself lately!)

Fort Hays is where Dances With Wolves was filmed. We had fun walking the movie sets.

Not that the kids have ever seen the movie, it was still really interesting to read about

and see how they filmed and where it took place.

After we browsed the film set, we continued down the boardwalk and made visits to many other turn-of-the-century workshops like the Tin Shop, Rope Shop, Blacksmith Shop, Sawmill, Penny Press and the Knife shop.

Did I mention Day 22 was also a special day because it was Finley's 2nd birthday!!!!

We missed having a party with friends a family back home.

But...

She did get to wear a little crown, ride a pony and visit with great presidents.

How often do you get to go to Mount Rushmore on your birthday?!

She wanted to ride this pony sooooo bad...

so we put her on and she started screaming and wanting her big brother.

seconds later.....

Big brother got on with her and she was all smiles!

She's so funny with him. She sure loves her big brother!

Yep, she's 2 now!

Full of fits......

Then she didn't want to get off the pony and threw a fit on the floor.

We left Fort Hays kicking and screaming....(Finley did at least)

Terrible 2's are in full effect!

But not without trying out a few tomahawks the knife man just got finished making...

We put the screaming birthday girl down for a nap as we drove up to Mount Rushmore!

When we arrived we saw that we had to pay another parking fee of $10.

(the parking fees alone we pay on this trip, we could of gone to Paris and back a few times!)

Anyway, we drove up to the toll station and handed the lady in the booth our debit card.
"Sorry, cash only."
What decade are we in? Cash only? We didn't have cash (we spent all our cash on buffalo burgers and pony rides)and we couldn't just turn this rig around and drive allllllllll the way down the mountain!

We haven't had this problem yet, everywhere takes cards.

(We didn't say any of that to the poor lady, we just asked the lady if their was an ATM inside and if we could pay her later.)

She agreed to let us park.

We found an ATM at the gift shop and was able to pay her.

Lesson learned..... we should always have cash on us!

Enough about parking. Let's get on to the monument itself....

President Washington is so cool!

The kids had fun taking funny pictures with the presidents and just admiring the beautiful piece of art.

Really these pictures don't show you just how amazing it is...

you need to go! (just remember to bring cash for parking.. haha)

The kids worked on their Jr. Ranger books....

Then we got ice cream and walked Presidents trail...

The birthday girl!

We watched a film on the making of Mount Rushmore, then went back to the RV to eat dinner.

After dinner we were waiting for the light ceremony to start. The kids played some more Monopoly and I checked in on facebook and saw a friends status saying they were at Mount Rushmore too!

(another friend from FOTR.)

So, I messaged her back saying, "We're here too! Look for us, kids will be wearing blue jackets with a bunch of patches on them."

Sure enough we spotted them and their kids had on road jackets vests too!

It was the Lundy5, we follow their blog and they follow ours!

Neat family!

The kids were non stop talking about all the places they have been.

Instant friends!

Josh and Austin

both 10

both excited about life, travel...

and military channel.

(friends for 10min and they already know a lot about each other!)

The light ceremony was really neat. They called everyone that has served to stand up and come forward.

The crowd was cheering......

Everyone sang," God Bless America"...

very moving!

The faces were all lit up...

what a site!
After we thanked these brave men for serving!

It was about 10:30pm before we finally sang Happy Birthday to Finley!

she loves bananas...I mean lovvvvvves bananas, so we gave her a banana party!

A very last minute thrown together banana party.

Nothing like her watermelon party last year!

Where I went watermelon crazy and planned for months.

Nope not this year...

The kids made bananas out of paper and I picked up a yellow cake, we threw some banana's on the table and waaa la!

Banana party!

She was happy and didn't notice the difference!

Look at that smile....

So

A-dork-able!

After singing Happy Birthday in the Mount Rushmore parking lot we headed down the mountain.

And...

because we liked our new friends the Lundy5 so much ,

we followed them and camped with them and probably annoyed them a little too! ha!

We are now on day 30 of our roadtrip part2

the last 8 days have been exciting!

I'll get to blogging those soon.......

for now we are enjoying our time at a family ranch in Colorado.

Where I'm learning the weather here changes every 10 minutes!