Our trip to the Black Hills-from Ross's point of view

For Christmas last year, my mom and dad bought Ross his own kiddie digital camera. Ross really loved it, and brought it to Mexico to document his trip. Unfortunately, it only seems to take black and white blurry pictures, and it produces files that are unreadable to pretty much any program. And, he had an unfortunate habit of wandering into danger while trying to look through the viewfinder. So, when we went on our family vacation, Ross got to bring our old digital for his own use. Here are some of his pictures.



Black Hills-Ross

The joys of facebook

Facebook has brought a lot of joy to my otherwise boring life. Seriously. My social calendar for this week includes dinner with my college roommate, coffee with a former coworker, and lunch with 4 former coworkers. That's like more socializing than I've done in the last 10 years! I've had a very dull weekend. I cleared my calendar to help a friend look for apartments, but she wasn't able to come. So, I did nothing yesterday. I've pretty much done nothing today. But, I've watched some really good TV. Like the new Real World/Road rules challenge. How old am I? Our family went out for supper last night, to a place we haven't tried before. They had some seriously excellent wings-buffalo, hoisin and BBQ. My entree was so-so. Oh well, at least I got out of the house!

I usually don't discuss my political beliefs with anyone but....

Sarah Palin drives me insane. Absolutely, positively, insane. Please lady, just spend some time with your family. I am by no means opposed to working mothers. I am a working mother. I just don't think that this is the best time in her life, or her children's lives to be the VP! I really feel that her kids need a little more of her time and attention right now. Supermommy is a myth. She doesn't exist. Grrrr.

Manwich

I don't eat sloppy joes. I eat BBQs.

At our volleyball tournament Friday night, we were provided with a buffet of "sloppy joes", chips and beans. One of my teammates started to eat and said that his sloppy joe sure tasted like BBQ. I was like, isn't that what they are supposed to taste like? I guess not. I guess most people eat Manwich. So, I had to try some.



Wow! It was gross.

I guess we'll stick to BBQs.

Heading Out West

This summer, we decided to attempt something that we really haven't before....a summer vacation. As this is Jeff's busy season, we wanted to visit somewhere that wasn't terribly far away, and we wanted to go somewhere new. After much research (by me) and gas price calculating, we decided on a trip to the Black Hills. Because we are such avid outdoorsmen, we decided to camp there. (actually we had to decide between a hotel and eating, and eating wins every time) Unfortunately, 3 days before we planned to leave, one of my patients mentioned the rattlesnakes there. Who knew? I certainly didn't! I hightailed it back to my office to Google it-turns out that yes, there are rattlesnakes, as well as garter snakes and bull snakes. That almost ruined the trip for me. I could only picture waking up to a snake sharing my body warmth. Yuck.

The morning of our departure, I was up at 3 am to shower and finish packing the car. I was planning that we would leave by 4. Why so early? I'm not sure-but I was determined! I should add that prior to this trip, the last time I slept in a tent was girl scout camp. I'm not sure if Jeff has ever slept in a tent. We had to borrow a tent from the neighbor, and another neighbor supplied us with a lantern and cooking stove-they were worried we'd starve (right)

So, at 4am, we packed Ross in the car and took off. Midge (the GPS) did not like our choice of route, but she adjusted. We drove all the way to Mitchell, SD with only a few quick bathroom breaks. Why did we stop in Mitchell? For the Corn Palace, of course!





Seriously, this place was completely covered with corn. I forced my family to check out the inside with me-expecting it to be a palace. Instead, it was like an old high school gym with crap for sale in it. Oh well, live and learn.



After a quick lunch, we were back on the road-Jeff and Ross both quickly fell asleep, leaving me to enjoy the beautiful trip across SD alone. It was dull. Really dull. Thank goodness for MP3 players. Both of the boys slept almost all the way to Wall, which foiled our plan of counting all the Wall Drug signs we saw. They also missed out on seeing a cow with the largest horns I've ever seen (they slept through it on the way home too-even worse, because the cow had his buddy~a camel in the pasture with him)

We took another break in Wall, at the world famous Wall Drug. We actually managed to not buy anything there-but we did have a cup of free water (remember, we're on a budget).






After our pit stop in Wall, it was time to find our campground. It was located very close to Mt Rushmore, about 5-6 miles from Hill City. Well, Midge decided that we should take a random tour of Rapid City first, including trying to send us on non-existent roads. We finally found our way out of Rapid City, and found our campground. We stayed at the Mt Rushmore KOA-it was the perfect place for beginning campers to stay. We checked in, found our camp space and started to quickly unload our car. Why? It was starting to thunder...then sprinkle. We threw the tent up in like 5 minutes, carried our beds and bedding in, and it started to storm. And I mean STORM! Ross and lasted almost 30 minutes in the tent before getting completely frightened. We had to leave Jeff in the tent for ballast, as the wind was alternating between making the walls fall down and picking up the whole floor. The storm lasted around an hour-at least 2-3 inches of rain, and the temp dropped from mid 70's to 40 degrees. Yes, 40 degrees, and we were staying in a damp tent.