It is official: we won’t be camping at WalMart anymore on this trip. It is just way too hot to camp without the electricity required to run the A/C. Yes, I am spoiled. I guess air conditioners are why God put me living in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. And if I ever did live off-grid, it would be in a cooler and less humid region of the country than where I live now. The humidity of the South is just horrible combined with the summer heat.

We finally pulled into a Sam’s Club in Bowling Green, Kentucky last night. We quickly put everyone to bed – AnaClaire in just a diaper because it was stifling outside and inside the camper. We opened all windows as well as the roof vents, but I had a hard time sleeping because it was so hot.

View of Kentucky in Mammoth Cave National Park. I’m so glad to see hardwood forests again!

The night eventually ended, and we quickly got up and into the van to get cool and leave. We drove the 45 minutes or so to Mammoth Cave. We had talked of taking turns doing a tour of Mammoth Cave because that would allow us to not take little ones into the cave, but we nixed that idea so that we could get on the road a little quicker. We took the 2 hour Domes and Dripstones tour which took us to the “new” entrance of the cave (built in the 1920s). This required descending about 280 steps into the cave. These passages were fairly narrow, but our guide explained that most of them were natural passages that we were descending through. Only a little blasting had to be done to put that entrance into the cave. The tour opened up into some great big rooms, and we did eventually get to see some beautiful flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites, and other formations. AnaClaire did better on this tour, mainly because I let her get down and walk around some. We all thoroughly enjoyed the tour. Our tour guide even surprised us all by telling us the zip code of our town when we told him where we were from.

Dominic pouting after not getting a ticket to take the Mammoth Cave tour (he was free)

Mammoth Cave

Mammoth Cave

Due to the horrible humidity, we even opted to not have a picnic. Instead we started driving east again deciding that we would stop for lunch later. However, a later lunch never came. We had granola bars and apples and such in the van. We just kept driving until we finally made it to Cumberland Gap. At Cumberland Gap, we quickly chose a campsite, turned the A/C on and went out to dinner. Afterwards, we came back and relaxed at the campsite for a while. I was trying to get some knitting in so that I could finish up my project sometime in the not-to-distant future. The littles were all filthy after playing for a while, so we took them for some showers. Before we knew it, it was bedtime on the last leg of our trip of blessings.

Games at the campground

Blessings,

Rebecca

Kids’ Corner:

Alex: I want to go back to the Wild Mustang Preserve or to Yosemite. I love waterfalls so that is one of the reasons I want to go back to Yosemite. That one time when they locked the road we had like an 8 hour drive to get back to the campground. Yosemite was my favorite. The Ingalls’ homestead was also neat. Before we went there, I always thought that Silver Lake was a lake, but it is really more like a bog. Making the jump rope was my favorite thing we did at the homestead. One person holds one end of the baling twine and another person spins the little machine that the twine is attached to at hooks. When each piece of twine gets very twisted, then they start braiding together.

My favorite thing at the Wild Mustang Preserve was going on the tour. We stopped and got off the bus in a couple places and were able to pet the horses. I just thought it was cool to see the mustangs there. I’m a little nervous around horses, but I did pet some of the mustangs. Something else that was cool was seeing the petroglyphs. The guide asked us questions about what we thought the carvings were pictures of. One carving kind of looked like a snake, but it also could have been a river.

Amelia

We left our campground a little before 10:00 this morning without a real destination. We wanted to head east towards Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, although we have no idea if we will be stopping there. We had to stop three times in the first three hours for bathroom breaks. I think I am going to ban Charlie from any more iced tea.

After our lunch stop, we were close to the border of Missouri and Kentucky and Illinois. We pulled out of our lunch stop heading in the wrong direction, so we had to turn around. We took another road to take us on the bridge over the Mississippi River. While driving down that highway, we observed lots of cropland that had been planted in wheat. The wheat had been harvested and the straw cut and now they were burning the cropland. There was the pungent smell of smoke permeating the air. The next thing we know, we saw a sign stating that the bridge for our highway into Illinois was closed and to take a different highway. After a couple more miles we discovered that we were actually going to have to turn around to take that other highway. There was no detour to take us to that highway – we just had to figure it out on our own. Well, we finally made it to that highway and crossed the Mississippi River and then the Ohio River.

Burning the wheat fields

Now that we were finally in Kentucky, we started following the directions for the highways that I wanted to take (read “not interstate”). After just a couple minutes, I realized that there was a road that could cut off some mileage for us, so I wanted us to turn around. We pulled into a scenic overlook to turn around and realized that it was an overlook of the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. There was a huge cross there at the overlook, so we decided that it was a good opportunity to stretch our legs and take a look.

Fort Jefferson Cross at the Confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

The confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

A little bit later, we hopped back into the van and began heading in the correct direction. I worked on my blog posts for a while; Charlie was following the GPS. A little later he asked me a question about directions. I looked at the map and realized that we were going in a totally different direction than what I was planning on. I had assumed the GPS was taking the route that I wanted (a southeasterly direction) when in reality it was taking us a northeasterly direction. We decided at Paducah to start going south to pick up the highway that I wanted to take (we took this highway 5 years ago and loved it). I decided not to rely on the GPS anymore because it wasn’t taking us the way I wanted to go and turned it off.

We took that highway all the way south to a cute little town called Mayfield. In Mayfield, we began looking for the highway that was going to take us east. We found the sign and turned in the direction of the sign. To make a very long story shorter, the signs were a disaster, and we had to turn around two more times before we were finally able to get on the road we wanted. Finally, we were on the road that would take us toward Mammoth Cave.

Amelia and Dominic

We were happily bee-bopping down the road that we wanted to be on when we saw a bridge coming up that was under construction and a detour sign for our highway and the direction we were going. There was no notice – just a quick detour sign to send us north. We quickly turned. When we looked over our shoulder, it appeared that there were vehicles travelling from a westerly direction across the bridge and it appeared that there may have been one car crossing the bridge coming from our direction. We decided to keep going in the direction that the detour sign pointed us. The next bridge to cross that river was 20-something miles to the north. We drove up there only to realize that we were going to end up taking the same highway that the GPS tried to put us on from right after we crossed into Kentucky at the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. We had basically just completed three sides of a rectangle and added hours to our day. I finally gave up and decided that God must want us to go this way for some reason. There was no way I was going to try to put us back on the highway I wanted to take when we had been taken off it three times for various reasons. We gave up on all ideas of stopping to make dinner somewhere and went and bought sandwiches in Arby’s.

After buying dinner, we were back on the road driving with our destination of Bowling Green. We had about 2 hours more of driving time. We sat back to enjoy the ride and let the long day roll off our backs. I was doing some deep breathing to get rid of the stress that I was experiencing from all the extra time we had had to spend in the van. I finally mellowed out just in time to come into Bowling Green. We had turned the GPS on because I was done with trying to get us there for the day. We were just going to rely on the GPS for now. The GPS said to get off on exit 2B. I looked at the sign and saw 2B and told Charlie that this is where we needed to exit because the GPS said so. He had to really hit the brakes before he missed the exit, but he made it. Just after we took the exit, the GPS told us to get off the interstate in 14 miles. Evidently, the GPS should have told us to take 2A because the A exit was going northbound, the direction that we wanted to go, and the B exit was going southbound. In the GPS’ defense, it did show us that we should have taken the next clover leaf exit, but it said and displayed “Exit 2B”. So much for relying on the GPS. Now we had to drive another 14 miles before we would even reach the next exit to be able to turn around. Another ½ an hour out of our way. Will this drive never end? What a day! I know there are blessings to be found in this, but I believe I will wait until tomorrow to try to be able to find them.

Blessings,

Rebecca

The raised bed gardens at Bakersville

We started our explorations in the Ozarks by driving to Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Mansfield, Missouri. I have purchased several seed packets from them in the past year or two and have really enjoyed their company. I highly recommend them: www.rareseeds.com Their Rocky Top lettuce mix is delicious! We ate those lettuces all winter long. Anyway, I had read that they had built a little pioneer village there (and that it was FREE!), so we decided to go check it out. The first thing that we encountered when we arrived was a beautiful raised bed garden. We were able to walk around on it (the paths were all paved with what appeared to be slate tile). There were flowers, herbs, small trees, lettuces, and such planted throughout as well as a beautiful fountain with fish pond. Charlie and I were so impressed with it and would absolutely love to do something along those lines at our home. It was gorgeous and so functional. The kids loved running around, and we had to keep an eye on some of the littles to keep them from swimming in the fish pond (and changing clothes in the monkey house – haha! I guess it would have been the chicken house there.)

Dominic petting a sheep

The pioneer village was a lot of fun to see. They had built a building that was a hotel/restaurant. I don’t believe there were actually rooms to sleep in, but there was a vegan restaurant where we ate lunch. The kids weren’t so sure about the menu as there were only two choices, and they didn’t include hamburgers, pizza, chicken fingers or grilled cheese. The choices were hummus with flatbread and veggies or roasted cauliflower with lemon and capers pasta. The kids are very familiar with hummus, so most of them chose hummus with flatbread. I, on the other hand, tried the cauliflower with pasta. It was delicious. Charlie was able to get a mixture of the two: roasted cauliflower and other veggies with hummus. The kids all gobbled up the hummus and flatbread as well as some of the veggies. Isaac had chosen the pasta and ate all of it. Most of the people in the restaurant worked for the seed company and were dressed in pioneer clothing. That was a fun and healthy experience.

Charlie and Damien

In the pioneer village, they also had a general store where they had a couple things for sale, an apothecary where we found various herbs, teas, and handmade soaps for sale, another building where they had pioneer clothing and such for sale, a blacksmith shop, a jail, and various barns. We had a lot of fun and bought a couple things. The girls so wanted me to buy them pioneer dresses, which were beautiful but way too expensive, so instead I bought a pattern so that I could see about making some dresses, bonnets, aprons, and pinafores. Isaac, Dominic, and Damien all received coon-skin caps (I’m not planning on going coon hunting any time soon or skinning any coons to make coon-skin caps). We finished by going to the seed store where I was able to buy some Lady Pea seeds that they had been out of when I placed my order in the early spring. Nicholas found a watermelon that he wanted to grow (and will share exactly 1 with our family J), and Nathanael bought a few sorghum seeds because he has been begging us to be able to grow some sorghum this summer. I believe doing some more planting will be one of the first things we do next week after we get home.

After Bakersville, we drove to Ava to do some grocery shopping and stopped at the local Ava Drug Store to buy ice cream for the kids at $.25 per scoop. At one scoop per child, we walked out of there having spent less than $3 on ice cream for everyone, although I added on a tip for the mess that we made sitting at the counter.

Next we drove around through the Ozark countryside for a while. While driving, we stumbled across a sign that said Assumption Abbey, so we ventured 5 miles down a dirt road looking for this monastery. We finally found it, and Charlie and I quickly went in to visit for a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament. Nothing else appeared to be open for us to see, so we glanced around the grounds and left. On the way back to the campsite we drove through yet another big rainstorm. It finished just before we reached the campground. Charlie began cooking stir fry for dinner, and I took the older five children to venture into a cave on the property next to the campground.

Assumption Abbey – a Trappist Monastery

We found the owners of the property next door to check-in with them about the cave. They told us that if the creek inside the cave reached waist-high, we probably didn’t need to venture any further as the water level in the cave may get too high. I told them that we weren’t wearing bathing suits, and I wasn’t going to do a bunch of wet laundry, so we wouldn’t be going that far in. We ventured down to the cave where we found a creek flowing out of it. In we went. There wasn’t a whole lot of dry dirt to walk on; it was mostly creek flowing through the middle. Since we had all put on our sandals appropriate for water (except Annette who somehow missed that message and wore tennis shoes) we walked through the water deeper into the cave. The deeper we traipsed, the lower the roof of the cave became. Most of us were walking quite hunched over. We reached a long tunnel part and decided to keep going. However, we didn’t get very far before I (who was in the lead) started slipping some in the silt of the creek. It was at that point that I decided we should turn around as I didn’t want one of us to slip and hit our head on a rock. Supposedly, if we had continued a little further, the cave would have opened up into a nice big room. However, it has been a long time since I have been caving without the benefit of being in a tour cave. Not having my dad with me (as I did when I was caving in Alabama) meant that I was in charge and responsible for everyone else. Maybe I’ll have a little more gumption the next time. Ryon saw a bat hanging from the ceiling while we were in there; at first I refused to look at it because I remember getting freaked out in the cave with my mom when I was young, but I finally summoned the courage to at least look at it on the way out of the cave. We sure did have fun doing that. It brought back a lot of memories of my childhood in Alabama, and I sure am glad that we ventured in a little. Hopefully that experience built some more great memories for the kids as I know it certainly did for me.

The cave in Mansfield, Missouri

Alex, Nicholas, Annette, Ryon, and Nathanael in the opening of the cave

Blessings,

Rebecca

Such a pretty girl

We left Lewis and Clark State Park and started driving south towards southern Missouri. The drive went without any problems, and we pulled into Mansfield, Missouri around 3:30. Mansfield was the home of Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder from the 1890s until both of their deaths. We visited here 5 years ago, but several of the younger kids didn’t remember that trip, so we decided to stop again. Annette really wanted to see Charles Ingalls’ fiddle. We had passed an RV park, the Laura Ingalls Wilder RV Park, just before arriving at the Wilder homestead, so we eventually pulled in there to camp for a couple days. The Ozarks won my heart when we drove through here 5 years ago, so I was excited to be able to spend a little time here exploring.

Wilder home in Mansfield, Missouri

It had temporarily stopped raining when we pulled in to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum and home. We went through the museum seeing many of the belongings of the Wilder family, as well as many things that belonged to Rose Wilder Lane as an adult, and then toured their home. It was interesting to hear that Laura had been just 4’11” and Almanzo just 5’4”. They had built their kitchen cabinets to be short to work better for Laura’s height. Interestingly enough, they had originally lived in a small log cabin, and when they built a larger home, they had put the kitchen from their log cabin on skids and pulled it over to the location of their new home and attached the old kitchen to the new home. Over the years they added on to their home a little at a time to make quite a nice-sized home for themselves. Their daughter, Rose, eventually purchased a home kit from Sears and Roebuck catalog. This home would normally have cost just $2000 to build in the early 1920s, but Rose added so many upgrades that it cost her $11,000. She even ran electricity to the home from the nearby town of Mansfield. That added an additional cost of $3000, an enormous sum in those days. Laura and Almanzo lived there from 1928 until 1936, when they moved back to their farmhouse that they had built themselves.

Sunset in the Ozarks

After the Wilder homestead, we pulled into the RV park, set up camp, and the kids ran for the playground. The two kids who live at the RV park came running out to play when they saw other kids to play with, so everyone was thrilled to have some new playmates. We made dinner, the kids played, and I went and visited with the owners of the Laura Ingalls Wilder RV park. It was such a nice, quiet campground. The owner gave us some recommendations of inexpensive things to do in the area, so we planned to take advantage of some of those suggestions the next day. Ryon and I went out and just drove around for a little while as I love to be able to see an area and turn down various roads to just see what I can see. I also had to pull into a realty office and pick up one of their booklets as I enjoy looking to see how much it costs to buy property in an area. This part of Missouri is fairly inexpensive, maybe even less expensive than our part of the Carolinas. I went to bed dreaming of our explorations for the next day.

Dominic lost in thought

Fog in the Ozarks

Blessings,

Rebecca

Nicholas and AnaClaire

We began our morning at a WalMart in Sioux City, Iowa. As it was Sunday, we looked up nearby Masses on our MassTimes app (that is SO handy!). We decided on a Mass at St. Michael in South Sioux City, Nebraska (Sioux City is in 3 different states – Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota (where it is North Sioux City).) It has been so interesting to attend Mass in so many different places, visiting with the people of each parish and seeing how different each church can be. It also does make me miss our beautiful St. Michael parish, wonderful priest, Fr. Buettner, and our fellow parishioners simply because we have such a wonderful parish in ALL ways! After Mass, we did some shopping, changed clothes, went to the bathroom multiple times, bought the necessary caffeine required for the day (for adults ONLY), and started driving.

Yes, he is still paying attention to the road

As I favor the backroads, we chose a US highway to drive south on that supposedly followed the Missouri River and was a scenic drive. Well, I believe we glimpsed the Missouri right after we got on that highway and then never saw it again while we were on it. We did, however, drive through some nice, small towns and see lots of farms as this was definitely more Big Ag country (lots of Round-up Ready corn being grown in that area). We were heading down to Atchison, Kansas, which is on the Missouri River, so we tried to continue to follow the river. We started down a smaller state highway near the border of Missouri and Kansas. This was not a busy highway at all. After we made it into Kansas, we saw the river fairly close to us, and we were all excited to finally be travelling where we could see the river. However, we didn’t go much further before we suddenly encountered a Road Closed sign. There was absolutely no warning; there were just barricades with a Road Closed sign. Fortunately, there was no one else on the road around us, so Charlie somehow managed to turn the van and camper around and begin heading back the way we came. I started looking on my phone, which fortunately had a signal, and managed to find a different road that it appeared we could take. We turned on there and eventually turned on our GPS to take us a different way (we would have turned it on earlier, but we were afraid it was just going to take us back to the road we had just left). Well, that was a real opportunity for driving down some big time back country roads, some of it was even through the Iowa Tribe Native American reservation. We finally made it back to civilization and Atchison, Kansas, where we were all in desperate need of bathrooms.

Annette with AnaClaire

Can you tell who likes getting her picture taken?

After gas and bathroom breaks, we drove up to Benedictine College to see the campus and view the Missouri River from the cliffs where the monastery is located. It was a beautiful site. We all enjoyed some running around time out of the van (Charlie wrestled with a couple of the boys – they all needed to get that out of their systems, Charlie included!), and then got back in to drive to our campsite. We drove over the river into Missouri to Lewis and Clark State Park where we also stayed when we visited Atchison 5 years ago for a friend’s wedding. We let the kids play on the playground while we fixed dinner, but the mosquitos were so bad that we didn’t keep them outside for very long. We even managed to get laundry done, and then it was off to bed for all of us. It had been a long day of driving without much play, but it had been a good day.

The Missouri River from the campus of Benedictine College

Benedictine Abbey overlooking the Missouri River

Damien and Dominic getting some of their male wrestling needs released

Blessings,

Rebecca

The covered wagon ride

Today was the day! I have always wanted to go to De Smet, South Dakota and visit the Ingalls homestead there. When we pulled into WalMart last night, we realized that we were now back on Central Time, so we had lost an hour. We stayed up way too late, so we slept in a lot later than we were hoping. We pulled out of WalMart around 9:00 a.m.(our goal had been 8:00 – it took a little while longer because Charlie and Ryon had been clowning around and had somehow broken Ryon’s top bunk in the camper, so then Charlie had to fix it.) We drove to De Smet and went to the homestead. A lady there explained to me that there was a museum in town that would take us to some of the buildings that the Ingalls family had lived in, so we decided to do that first. We were able to drop our camper at the homestead since we would be going downtown De Smet, and they had a big festival and parade going on there that day.

The kids in one of the barns

When we arrived downtown, we were able to park easily. Charlie took the younger kids across the street to play at a park while I signed us up for a tour. The older kids and I spent time looking around the museum they had there, and then we all went out for the tour. We saw the Surveyor’s House, which is where the Ingalls lived during their first winter in De Smet. Then we were able to see an older school like the school Laura would have attended as well as a small school that would have been like the school she taught at. Next we had to drive (following the tour leader) to the home that Charles Ingalls built for his family in town after Laura was married. However, due to a parade for the local festival they were having, we were delayed a bit. We had to stop and wait on the parade. While we were watching the parade, the people in the parade generously threw a ton of candy our direction. We ended up with a grocery bag full of candy. Just what we needed! Candy for children who are riding in the car multiple hours every day! The kids were so excited. I just groaned every time more candy was tossed in our direction. AnaClaire got a small Twizzlers that kept her happy for quite a while. They all did well and didn’t overdo it.

The covered wagon ride

The kids waiting to use the functional, two-seater outhouse. I even locked the outer lock on Ryon for a little bit. I used to see them do things like that on the Little House TV show, of which I have seen all episodes!

Ryon thinks we need to install a windmill to pump our water and save us money.

The kids in the back of a covered wagon.

After the in-town tour, we drove out to the homestead. Thank goodness this was a good place for them to all run around and burn off their energy from the candy. We ate lunch, saw a short video, and went outside to see the property. The Ingalls family received 160 acres from our government via the Homestead Act. Charles and Caroline Ingalls had 5 children of which 4 lived to adulthood.  Of those 4, only Laura had biological children, a son who died as an infant and a daughter who lived to adulthood.  The daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, only had one stillborn child, so there are no direct descendants of the Ingalls family.  Assuming I understood correctly, none of the original buildings from the Ingalls’ homestead still existed. However, the people who own the property now had brought in old buildings from other locations and maybe built some of them in order that we could see the size and manner in which these late 1800s buildings were fashioned. We saw a dugout home, a homestead shanty, a sod-roofed barn, a huge wood barn, an old schoolhouse, and a home that would have been about the size that Charles Ingalls had eventually built for his family on their homestead. There was a lot of information and references to the books that Laura had written. In the school, the kids were able to dress up in period hats and sit at the desks and listen to a teacher talk about school in the late 1800s. They were also able to take horse or pony rides, and we all rode in a horse-drawn wagon. They all were able to take turns making jump ropes from a little machine with baling twine and making corn-cob dolls (or super-heroes for the boys). Needless to say, we all had a wonderful time. It was a very full day. We had thought that we would finish here in a morning, but there was so much to do that we spent the whole day there and left happily exhausted and full of smiles.

Dominic and Amelia sitting in the school listening to the teacher (Dominic never sits that still)

Damien on horseback.

AnaClaire playing the organ

Alex on horseback.

Blessings,

Rebecca

Charlie and I just found out a couple days ago that Ryon had two Religion tests and two papers that he still needed to turn in to

The Badlands

finish his Religion course and that they are due Monday (June 15). Needless to say, we have been insisting that Ryon spend the time needed to finish his work, so he got up early this morning and Charlie took him to find a wifi connection to send in a paper and a test. Now he is half way done.

The Badlands

After they returned, we hooked everything up to pull out. I was nervous about whether we were going to be able to get out of that campground. This part of South Dakota usually gets around 12 to 15 inches of rain per year. The campground owner was telling us that they had had 12 inches of rain in the past two weeks. The ground was pretty saturated when we arrived in the Black Hills – we saw large puddles of standing water in many areas (and having 6 boys means that lots of them walked right through those huge puddles – all those wet shoes make for some really stinky feet!). Well, it rained all day on Thursday leaving the roads in the campground muddy. Our campsite was situated toward the bottom of a hill, so as soon as we turned out of our site we were going to have to go uphill in the mud. I was worried we weren’t going to get the speed and traction we needed to get out, but fortunately we had no problems. Thank you, God!

We got out on the road, heading to the Badlands. We weren’t exactly sure what the Badlands were but had heard they were beautiful (I can’t seem to find my AAA book for the Dakotas, so I haven’t been able to read much about anything in the area). We finally found a good map so that we could drive through as much of the Badlands as possible, so we pulled onto a dirt road. As we drove down that road, we saw very few cars. In a little while, we realized why – the road was closed. We turned on another road that led us out and around some of the park. We finally got back into the park and began a scenic drive. The drive was gorgeous. It was amazing to see the beautiful sandstone formations of many colors, often with bison roaming through them. The formations really looked like giant sandcastles. The sandstone appeared so fragile; it looked as if it would crumble apart if you tried to walk or climb on it. I could easily understand how the elements have eroded these formations to be what we see today. The film we saw said that the Badlands could totally disappear in 50,000 to 100,000 years due to erosion. We had a picnic, visited the Visitors’ Center, did the Jr. Ranger program, and finished our drive through the Badlands. I am so glad we decided to drive through there, and we all wished we had had more time so that we could do some hiking while we were there.

The Badlands

Back on the interstate heading east we drove through flat southern South Dakota seeing large farms for as far as the eye could see. We finally got off the interstate and drove to the town of Huron, SD for more Wal-Mart camping, not far from De Smet where we planned to visit the Ingalls Homestead, the setting for the majority of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books.

Blessings,

Rebecca

Written by Nathanael Whisonant and Nicholas Whisonant

Damien at Custer State Park

We wake up at a campground in Custer, SD. We eat breakfast and leave for the day. First we go to the national museum of woodcarving.

My mom and dad go into the museum and come back to the car and said that the four older kids could get out. Ends up that just dad, Ryon, Alex, and I (Nathanael) get out. We go in and pay for us.

First we watch a movie about the woodcarving at the museum. It was very good. Then we go and look at the wood carving. Some of carvings could move and talk, others couldn’t. The carvings were awesome. After we looked at the carvings, we met a man who worked there and does handmade carvings. We talked with him and he showed us some really cool and funny carvings. One of the cool things was he took his belt and a wood tobacco pipe, he put the belt over the top of the pipe-shaped wood and put the pipe on my finger. You know what, it balanced on my finger. It was awesome. After that we went and saw a few people using little electric tools to make wooden birds. Finally we go into the gift shop and look around. They had some very good looking carvings and we ended up getting a cribbage board which is beautiful. If any of you ever go to Custer, I highly recommend going there.   (By Nathanael)

At the National Woodcarving Museum

At the National Woodcarving Museum

Then we went to the Mammoth Site. It was amazing. We learned that there were two different kinds of species, the Wooly and Columbian Mammoths. The Columbian was 4.3 meters high and the Wooly was 3.4 meters high. One of their predators was the Giant Short-Faced Bear. He could take out a Columbian. The Giant Short-Faced Bear could, if it stood on its hind legs and strained its arms, reach 15ft 4in tall, about to the shoulder of a Columbian mammoth. There was first a sinkhole, then it turned into a hot spring. The mammoths liked to get into the pool because it was warm, but once they got in they never got out because they drowned. However, their bones were preserved in it. Eventually the hot spring filled in and became a hill so the bones were preserved. Years later a man bought the land to build some apartments. The hill needed to be flattened. So when they were working on it a bulldozer turned over some bones and the owner immediately stopped work and sold it at cost to an archeologist who began to excavate the fossils. Eventually it became the Mammoth Site. I highly recommend it. As a matter of fact the sink hole is still being worked in. If you go there you might be able to see them work in it. Make sure you go in the summer or it is highly unlikely that you will see them working in it because in the winter they work in the lab on the artifacts and fossils found during the dig in the summer. (By Nicholas)

Our family at the Mammoth Site

Skeleton of Giant Short-Faced Bear

After leaving the Mammoth Site, we drove into Custer State Park and took some of the wildlife loop. This is a very large state park with long scenic drives. We saw elk and what I believe was a Yellow-Bellied Marmot along with mule deer and bison. I never thought it would be possible to not be excited about seeing a bison, but we sure have seen a lot of them in the past several parks. It is encouraging to see so many as we all know how close to extinction they became. I still love to try to get into areas in these parks where I can’t even see the road and just imagine what it was like for the Native Americans, trappers, pioneers, etc. when they first arrived in these parts and all the natural beauty that they saw.

Yellow-Bellied Marmot?

Prairie Dog – I had to work to get this good of a picture

The West is so full of National Parks, that it has caused me to wonder why we have so few National Parks in the East. Yes, I know that we do have some, and some people may argue that there isn’t such unusual beauty in the East, but I am beginning to think that much of the very natural beauty in the East was already gone way before the idea of National Parks began. A good bit of the East was settled long before National Parks were born. Many of the old-wood forests were already gone – the really huge Live Oak trees had already been cut for being made into ship masts and such. It is disappointing that so much of the beauty of the East is commercialized and/or privatized. You can’t easily go to many natural beaches in the Carolinas and just enjoy the natural beauty. I wish I could though. It would be nice to be able to have a glimpse of what settlers would have seen when they first came to the Carolina coasts – not just huge hotels or lots of houses with throngs of people covering the beaches. I guess for now I will just have to use my imagination (or pay a lot of money to travel to someplace like Cumberland Island, GA – at least I think it costs a pretty penny; I could be wrong). Fortunately, I can still find a good deal of beauty in the Carolinas, and I love to go drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway – what a blessing that place is!

Blessings,

Rebecca

Isaac’s 7th birthday on the road

We have a birthday on the road today; Happy Birthday Isaac! Isaac is 7 years old today! He has been such a blessing to our family. On this trip, we have been able to count on Isaac to be full of questions about what he is seeing, and he has been pretty well-behaved, although he does like to get into mischief sometimes. -Rebecca

Damien on the bus

Today it didn’t take long to figure out what we were going to do. We were going to go to the Horse Sanctuary to see wild mustangs. (It was real cool to see a bunch of old Fords running around.)😉 The Ranch was started back in 1988, by Dayton Hyde. Dayton went to D.C. with several men who were in high positions at his side asking for a grant for a large number of mustangs. With some persuasion he finally was granted 300 mustangs. After some time he finally found a place not far from Hot Springs, SD to let all 300 mustangs prance freely through pastures. He named the ranch IRAM (Institute of Range And American Mustang.) Today they have about 600 mustangs. Many of the newer horses were brought there to retire. IRAM originally had only several thousand acres, but over the course of the years it has grown to be about 11,000 acres. At least two movies have been filmed on IRAM. For one of the films they made a replica of what they thought Fort Robinson would have looked like, but today it has no purpose but to store a few items and for the horses to go in. I seem to have neglected mentioning that though these horses live on a ranch they are pretty much self-reliant and only moved to different pastures when in need of grass and at the change of the seasons. In the drier times they are also given water but other than that they are technically wild.

Wild paints

Ryon and AnaClaire. She was so excited about seeing the horses, but a little nervous about being close to one

Spanish mustangs

When we finally got to IRAM it didn’t take us long to find some mustangs grazing in the field. We drove on to the main building complex of the ranch where we found out we only had 20 minutes to eat lunch before we got on a bus tour to see the mustangs and different parts of the ranch. After we sat down to eat lunch we got on the bus. The first two places we got out were overlooks. The first overlook was of the building complex which includes the barn, the office and gift shop, a few small pens with turkeys roaming around in them, and a bunch of campers and RV’s for the employees and volunteers to live in with a river in the back ground. The second overlook was of the fort. The guide told us this story where a bunch of rocks used to be animals while others were part of an old huge mushroom grove. It really was quite funny how so many people have such huge imaginations (though the guide didn’t truly believe these stories any more than the rest of us.) We then went through a field with hundreds of horses (which weren’t supposed to be paints but there was one which everyone thought might be one which was placed with these solids.) (When I say “solids” I mean a horse with a solid color.) There was one horse there which used to be part of a Mexican rodeo who had had the tip of its ears cut off. No one could understand how this could help a rodeo horse work better or why it was done to the horse. When we got to a gate to get to another pasture, we saw a paint which was supposed to be with the other paints but had somehow gotten with the solids. We then went through and were able to go by where some Native Americans from the Lakota Sioux were setting up teepees and such for their upcoming ceremony called “The Sun Dance” which takes a total of four days to accomplish (I think.) We then went on to see some paints where we were able to see quite a variety of beautiful paints of all colors. Many were VERY beautiful and majestic creatures. We then went on and were quite fortunate to see some ancient petroglyphs on some cliffs which had many different shapes. One or two of them looked like a horse which mystifies many because at the time these were carved there weren’t any horses to be found in the Americas. The guide believes that the image of the horse was carved into the cliff at a later point in time. Then  there also were some other petroglyphs which looked like mammoths. They were super cool. We were all able to pet several horses while we were looking at the petroglyphs. We then went to yet another pasture where we were able to become somewhat acquainted with some Spanish Mustangs which were a smaller breed. I thought it was rather funny that the Native Mexicans thought that these small creatures with Hernan Cortez’s men were huge monsters with men riding on them. These horses really aren’t all that much bigger than a large deer. After this we saw an old homestead with the house falling down and the barn, well… there are only some signs left that there even was one. We then went by an old school which had been repaired and is now quite a beautiful old building.

Petroglyphs carved into a cliffside

Who can guess what these are? Dad, you seem to be pretty good at this!

One of the teepees and the “Tree of Life” set up for the Sun Dance

When we got back from this two hour+ tour we had a snack and went and bought some postcards. We then got in the van satisfied with a fun afternoon of driving through horses and learning about their history of how they got into these pastures. Out of all of us AnaClaire had to have had the most fun. She was sticking her head out the windows and squealing whenever we got close to horses. It took her a couple of times of getting close before she warmed up to the idea of petting one. I think it really enlightened Dad on many things, and so now finally we got him to say that he would at least entertain the idea of getting a horse if we do the research. He is now convinced that if he gets one it may be best to try to purchase one of these mares’ colts, as these are supposed to be good at quite a variety of different activities. If any of you ever plan on coming to southwestern South Dakota, this ranch is a GREAT family activity and is sure to send the little ones squealing and the older family members into great delight. Again this ranch is called IRAM.

Written by: First Man on Mars (keep reading, there is a bonus below…)

Alex, Annette, and Amelia on the bus

Isaac and Damien on the bus (pinching has been Damien’s favorite pastime on this trip!)

Damien deep in thought

An American Incite

Those poor English Ladies and Gentleman,

They all had to put up with such a pathetic Monarch, who was no true Man,

When they all heard of the land of the New Sunrise,

They all risked everything while others sold themselves to start on a new rise,

Crossing the ocean caused many to die while trying to insure another try,

When the survivors reached the land of the Sunrise,

They all knelt in prayer and thanksgiving to God for reaching the land of beginning,

It didn’t take long for these Ladies and Gents to figure out it wasn’t the land of the new Sunrise,

But the land of opportunity and New Beginning,

When these people started moving to the West Coast,

They all found a New Sunrise once more,

When they saw that risen sun they all remembered once more why they all moved to this land of opportunity,

That sun rising over the crested hills and coming out of the canyons caused many a man to kneel down and weep in thankfulness for their freedom and for their new chances which come with the sunrise every day,

The Sunset did the same thing,

It made them remember that even though that day may have been bad, the next day would bring new chances,

Today many take for granted the gift of the New Sunrise, forgetting that their ancestors came here for a new beginning which began with the New Sunrise,

Now the US needs to look towards the New Sunrise to remind it there is always a brighter day.

I wrote this while we were in the California-Oregon-Washington area

Composed By: First Man on Mars

[CW1]

Our family at Mt. Rushmore

Today we decided that Mount Rushmore was the top thing to do on our list. After an oatmeal breakfast (or bacon and fruit and nuts for Charlie and I), we drove over there. It was a bright, beautiful day and was already quite warm, so we tried to be prepared for that kind of weather. We made sure that everyone had hats, and we actually brought sunscreen with us.

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore was different than many of the things we have done so far. I was trying to decide why it felt so different, and I believe that I arrived at the conclusion that this is one of the few man-made creations that we have seen. We learned a little about its creation, saw the monument, and took a trail that led us a little closer (that trail was a good workout – there were lots of steps). After the trail, we saw no reason to do much else. Everything was SO busy. We did stop by the gift shop of course, but after that we hurried back to the car so that we could go find a place for a picnic. We all decided that we were glad that we saw Mt. Rushmore, but it isn’t something we feel like we would ever need to come back and see again. The highlight of the day, at least for Charlie and I, was speaking with a Native American park ranger. He explained to us that he was a member of the Lakota Sioux and that he had just begun working with the National Park. His job with Mt. Rushmore was primarily to help educate visitors about the Native Americans. He is also working with the park system to put in some kind of outdoor Native American exhibit there at Mount Rushmore. He spoke with us about some of the history of his tribe and their difficulties with the American government in the past not sticking to the treaties that were made between the government and the Native Americans. He even mentioned that his tribe had been given the Black Hills in one of the treaties, but the government came and stole it from them. I do pray that one day our government can find a way to do right be the Native Americans.

The Black Hills

The South Dakota grasslands in Wind Cave National Park

We had our picnic and drove around for a little while (I even took a nap – no caffeine this morning). It was pretty warm, so we stopped to treat the kids to an ice cream. We eventually ended up at Wind Cave National Park and decided, despite our past experiences, to do a 1 ½ hour cave tour. We love to see caves, but in the past we have had several experiences where one of us has taken a baby out of the cave because they were too fussy. However, we decided to try again. All kids, except AnaClaire, did great in the cave. Poor Charlie ended up carrying Damien, asleep in his arms, through a large part of the cave, but while Damien was awake, he did well going up and down the stairs and was just amazed at so much of what he saw. AnaClaire fussed throughout much of the cave, simply because she did not want to be in the backpack or carried; she just wanted to get down and move. I did the whole tour with her anyway, but as soon as we were finished I put her down so that she could walk around, which she was much happier about. The cave is considered to be a dry cave, so you don’t have the stalactites and stalagmites that you often see in other caves. However, it did have something called boxwork formations that really looked like thin spider webs. It was very unusual, and the ranger told us that 95% of the box formations in caves throughout the world are found in Wind Cave. After the tour the older kids were asking the ranger all kinds of questions, so he ended up taking them to see the natural entrance of the cave. How special that was for them!

Boxwork inside Wind Cave

Back to the campground we went to fix dinner and settle in for a quiet evening. Ryon and I worked on a paper that he needs to turn in, and we all headed off for an earlier bedtime than we have been having.

Blessings,

Rebecca