Mount Rushmore!

We arrived in Hill City, SD Saturday night. We checked in to our hotel and found a place to eat. We wanted real food, which meant that it took longer and we didn't leave the restaurant until 8:30pm. We stopped by a grocery store and then went to bed.


Sunday morning we got up, showered, ate breakfast and then went to the Mount Rushmore ward for Sacrament meeting.

We changed into pants at the church building and headed out to try and see Mount Rushmore. It was rainy and cloudy and we were tempted to not even give it a try. But we came all this way, so we had to go and see what we could see.


The 2 umbrellas in the van were very handy.

Here it is!  Mount Rushmore!

You can kind of see George Washington's round forehead.

The rain didn't stop us from playing in the run and having a good time.

We went inside and downstairs to the tourist spots to see if there was something we could take a picture by to show that we actually had come to Mount Rushmore.

When we got back upstairs and outside the clouds and cleared a little bit!  We could see all 4 Presidents.  Horray! It was not a waste of time to drive home this way.

Still raining on the walk back to the car.

But Jet didn't let that bother him.

And then we drove home!

Driving and an Unexpected Stop

We did not stay the night in Pocatello. Instead we drove to Kemmerer, WY.  The drives to Pocatello and then to Kemmerer were absolutely beautiful. It was shame that we had some rainy weather, and then night driving so we couldn't see as much as we wanted to.

After playing in the hotel pool we started our drive to the Mount Rushmore Memorial. On the way we discovered that Martin's Cove and the Mormon Handcart Park were just off the rode, so we took an unexpected break.

I have a great-great-great grandmother that was a 10 year old child with the Martin Handcart. It was cool to see her families name up on the wall.

We decided to borrow a handcart and go on a very short journey.

Morgan and I pulled the kids, but it started sprinkling again so we kept things short.

This is a picture of Devil's Gate.

Jet was pretty tired.

Hanging Out in Pocatello

After we had fun in Utah we decided to drive up to Pocatello to see family there before we headed back to Iowa.


Noelle is showing me that she lost the owl pendant that was on a necklace that Aunt Shannon gave her. She was very upset because this necklace was very, very special to her.  Kyle is looking in the air conditioning unit for the said owl pendant.

We kept Jet locked in the swing.

Playing football.

Jet is still locked up, because we didn't want him to look like his cousin...

Who was busy playing in a sand box that had turned into a lovely mud pit.

Later, Noelle lost the necklace chain underneath the deck of the house. So we had to look for that, too.

We put the camera on a timer and took this great picture. Except Jet, who was sitting on the car, wanted to check out the camera and missed the shot.

So then we held him and stopped his shenanigans.

Driving to Pocatello

Noelle loved her wings and wand!

Noelle also got to open some late birthday presents while we were in Utah.

She was VERY excited about it.

On our drive up to Pocatello we stopped by a couple more temples. Here we are at the Bountiful Utah Temple.

Jet decided he wanted to see the camera .

He made it!

Then we drove up to the Ogden Utah Temple. Eli and Josh loved walking along the fence.

We needed to hang out at the fountain for a minute.

Walking backward is much more fun.

Finally, our last temple of our trip was the Brigham City Temple.