Squishing in a Summer Vacation

Because Justin is doing an internship this summer, we had already resigned ourselves to the idea that there would not be any big, fun summer vacations for us this year.  That's a disappointing thing to admit.  However, Justin's brother got married in the Boise temple the week after my family reunion.  Justin got permission to take one week off to attend the wedding festivities.  At first we toyed with the idea of using most of that time to drive from Utah to Crater Lake, Oregon, but since those plans coincided with the 4th of July, we gave up on that idea.

What ultimately ended up happening was Justin flew into Salt Lake and met me in Utah at the end of my reunion.  Then we continued on from there to Boise to celebrate the 4th of July with the Goodales, and assist with wedding preparations.  We worked in a little bit of time to go out and visit a petting zoo of sorts there called Babby Farms too.

Watching the river otters together.

This is seconds before Justin batted the monkey's paw away from Caroline's face and the monkey freaked out and retreated into a shrieking little ball until a worker rushed over to calm it down.

In the wallaby pen.  The wallaby didn't really seem to like this whole petting zoo idea.

On the pony ride, she insisted on holding onto her dad with one hand at all times.

The wedding was later in the week, and from my perspective it seemed to go just as planned.  I have no pictures from the actual event, but the bride and groom seem happy to me.

The morning after the wedding Justin and I loaded up our car, said our goodbyes to the family, and set off for home...sort of.  Our first destination was Helena, Montana.  We skipped going the most direct route and instead elected to drive up through Salmon, Idaho, which is significantly longer, but has the scenery to make up for it.  It was a long drive, we had started kind of late, so we arrived in Helena around 9:30pm thoroughly impressed with what we had seen of the state thus far.  We were somewhat less impressed with our dinner options, since it seemed most of the city shut down at 10pm, something we discovered after 10pm.  We had to settle for Mexican fastfood.

We got up uncomfortably early the next morning and left for The Gates of the Mountains boat tours.  We make a habit of raiding the tourists pamphlets everywhere we stay, and in one of them we had first read about these tours.  We've wanted to take one ever since.

Waiting for our tour to start.  She was thrilled to be on a boat.

As soon as the tour started she started wrestling with her dad to try and jump overboard.  That went on the entire tour.

The whole tour was beautiful.

Although our tour guide was a little dramatic and seemed to fancy himself something of a riveting storyteller (we would describe him as more of a name-dropping know-it-all, with some extremely rehearsed lines) the tour itself was amazing.  The canyon we traveled down was absolutely beautiful, and hey, a lot of other people seemed to love the guide.  He got a hearty applause at the end.

We briefly discussed taking some time to explore Helena, but quickly realized that there wouldn't be time for that.  We set off for the Black Hills of South Dakota.  We did however, manage another stop in Montana at the Little Big Horn Battlefield.  We felt like we were doing okay on time, so we toured around, learned a lot, and left very glad that we had made the stop.

Vivian cruising around the National Cemetery portion

There are markers set up throughout the area showing where each soldier's body was found.

The sun was just starting to set when we left.

Had we known about the road ahead we probably would have rushed through the battlefield.  The road that cut through a corner of Wyoming and into South Dakota ran parallel with a river.  Our theory is that this is why for MILES we saw a deer standing by the road every couple of yards.  We did the only thing that we felt like made any sense, and said a prayer asking for a safe arrival, reduced speed, and tailgated a semi-truck most of the way.  We really believe that we probably saw over a hundred deer and antelope on that stretch of road.  We were granted our safe arrival late that night as we arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Our start the next morning was extremely slow and Vivian announced to us from the backseat that "Mom and Dad are crabby," which was unfortunately true.  Our little mediator back there also demanded a few times that we "stop TALKING!"  Something that she's taken to doing recently if she detects even the slightest hint of hostility in our voices, regardless of whether or not its' directed at each other.  It's funny, most of the time.

Heeding our reprimand, we adjusted our mood and drove to Wind Cave National Park.  We had planned on doing one of the little prairie walks, but it was so blazing hot outside that we decided to do a shortish cave tour instead.

In the entryway, waiting for our tour to start.

Apparently this cave feature is unique to Wind Cave, and I can't remember what it's called.

Vivian trying to give me kissy lips.

Afterwards we stopped to show Vivian some prairie dogs, and got our sign picture.

Justin introducing her to Prairie Dogs.

Of course a sign picture.

We continued on our trip through Nebraska, where I finally saw land that was "pancake flat" open farmland.  I wish that I had thought to take a picture.  I've never seen anything quite like it before, and it was beautiful in it's own way.  We stopped in to visit Scotts Bluff National Monument.  This was a major passageway for the Mormon pioneers, which is why it caught our interest, and we were willing to take a detour to stop in and see it.

Still trying to wake up from her nap in the car.

Once she woke up she took off running up this path.

Predictably, she was most interested in the rocks by the side of the path.

The actual bluff 

It was terrible lighting for this photo.

By the time we left Scotts Bluff the sun was setting, and we were pretty much guaranteed a late arrival back home in Colorado Springs.  We pulled in a little after 1am.  Justin somehow managed to stay awake all through work the next day.  When I asked him if it was worth it to squeeze in that little vacation he gave me a look that told me he thought that my question was absurd and then responded with an "of course it was worth it.  I'm glad we did it!"  So am I!