Happy 4th of July (cont.)

Okay, I had to stop my posting in the middle, because I was so frustrated, and it wasn't working, so sorry that the last one was kind of random, and now I have a lot of the same pictures again, but I don't care. If this doesn't work this time, I think I might swear off blogging forever! (And these are out of order, I know that you don't care, but it bugs me). Like I said, I'm still kind of testing this whole blogging thing out.
The picture in front of the statue is in the Sculptor's Studio at Mount Rushmore. This is what Mount Rushmore was supposed to end up looking like, but the guy who was doing it died before it was completely finished. I thought it was cool though because this statue has down to like their stomachs and the mountain just has their faces. Some of you may ask who is standing next to me... That's Josh's brother. He's single so he was my stand-in husband for this picture!




This is a picture of Josh and I at the walkway leading to Mount Rushmore. You can't tell but the mountain is behind us.


















Mount Rushmore itself.














I said this on the last blog, but these are pictures of Josh and I pushing handcarts at Martin's Cove. We stopped there on the way to South Dakota, the day before we went to Mount Rushmore. (Like I said, the pictures are out of order.)
Ah! I just deleted the picture of Josh and I, and I don't know how to get it back. (You can look at the other blog for that.)








This is me wearing a Junior Ranger's hat at this windcaves National Park we went to AFTER we went to Mount Rushmore.
We went to Crazy Horse right after we went to Mount Rushmore, and it was pretty much a huge disappointment. We felt like we got ripped off because we paid like 3 times as much to get in, but the carving isn't even close to being done. But here's a picture of the whole fam at Crazy Horse. (For all those who don't know, (because I didn't) Crazy Horse is a carving that an indian tribe is doing in honor of Chief Crazy Horse. They started it like 60 years ago, and it's still not finished yet. Just for the record, it took 14 years to complete Mount Rushmore.)
This is me standing next to a statue of what Crazy Horse will look like eventually. (Probably not in our lifetimes, but maybe someday.) You can barely see the mountain in the background, and so far, they've carved his head, and started his arm-no horse yet.
There's the closest picture that we got of Crazy Horse, because you had to PAY to ride a bus to get any closer, and since we already felt that we had been taken, we weren't about to give them even more money!
Oops! And here's the whole family at Mount Rushmore again!
On Saturday night, we went to Sturgis, South Dakota, which, (I learned) is where the biggest motorcycle rally in the world is held every year. Josh and his brothers were pretty excited, but for me there pretty much wasn't anything worth taking pictures of. It's a pretty old, run down town, and a lot of the stores and stuff are closed all year except during the rally. So we went for long enough for Josh's family to spend about $600 on motorcycle leather, and then we left. At least we can say we've been there!

On Sunday before leaving we stopped at a Mammoth exhibit. In the 70's a man was digging holes because he was going to start building a subdivision, and noticed some bones. As it turns out, there was a sink hole a long, long, long, long time ago, and some Mammoths got stuck in it, couldn't get out, and now there's an exhibit with a bunch of Woolly and Columbian Mammoth bones. They're not done digging-they work on it about 7 weeks a year, and the rest of the time tourists can go through the exhibit. It sounds random, but it was actually pretty cool.



They had several groups going through the exhibit at a time, so the tour guides talk to their group on individual phones-thus, the picture with me on the phone. The picture with Josh and his mom shows how big a Columbian Mammoth is compared to Josh. (Josh is 6 feet.)

Then we drove home, and it was a very long drive, but it was a lot of fun, and I don't know if we ever would have planned a trip to see Mount Rushmore, so I was glad that we took this opportunity! Happy 4th!