Thursday, August 4, 2011

South Dakota Road Trip- Friday

Friday morning we kind of relaxed a little, slept in and then Charlotte and I did a little grocery shopping for the weekend. We got a bit of a late start. We knew we wanted to see Mt Rushmore on Friday, but we wanted to be there for the lighting ceremony at night. We broke out the local guidebooks and found some interesting things to see during the hotter part of the day.

First we went to Four Mile Ghost Town which was pretty close to where we were in Custer. It was a little plot of land that a family bought and set up a ghost town which you could tour.

The interesting part was that you could go in all the buildings and really explore all the stuff.

Here's Audry playing in the saloon.

And Willy exploring the schoolhouse.

There was lots of old farm equipment to climb on too!

They had some silly places to take your picture....

And baby goats (doats!)! Which Audry wanted desperately to pet, but they were afraid of her.

Next we were off to the Rushmore Caves.

At first Audry was a little scared of being a caver, so we helped her along.

Soon enough she was thrilled to be in the "baves"

Here's Charlotte contemplating stalagmites and stalagtites and other mineral formations.

As you can see, it is so fun to cave with Daddy!

Finally we made it to Mt. Rushmore.
I was expecting that since it is so much smaller than Crazy Horse it would seem really small
But they really didn't since we could go up much closer to the monument.

Willy, posing for his memorialization in stone.

And Audry did too.

We stayed late to see the lighting ceremony which Charlotte found to be surprisingly patriotic.
Audry was completely wiped out, yet again... too bad she didn't sleep later in the morning to make up for it!