South Dakota Part 2

Sunday our time with cousins began.  Aunt Kirsten, Uncle Ranen, Mason, Owen and Raelle ended up having to drive 15 hours straight through.  Due to the Sturgis motorcycle rally there were NO hotel rooms available. They arrived at about 5am Sunday.   The cousins have been having a marvelous time.  The boys hit it off with Raelle right away.  She latched onto Dillon just as she did for Uncle Justin's wedding, Carson got jealous that Dillon was giving all his attention to someone else... eventually they all figured out how to get along.

 

Grandma and Papa G have an "exploratory" gold mine in their yard.  It is tucked away at the base of the hill and about 14 feet deep.  The kids loved it! Dillon has spent the most time in there by far!  Unfortunately one particular day of play the all the boys and Raelle decided that they should have dirt baths.  Aunt Kirsten and Aunt Ayana (this was later in our trip) looked down the hill to find them all running around naked as the day they were born rubbing themselves with dirt.  Needless to say that resulted in some super nasty showers and a thorough discussion about private places.

We went down to Rapid City to go to the store and visit a few attractions.  On the way there and back we probably saw over 3000 motorcycles. 

Carson got to choose his hat for his birthday from Grandma and Papa G.  He chose the one with a horse on it and I must say he is one of the handsomest cowboys ever to exist!

Carson and Raelle are pretty darn good buddies now!

Think there are enough antlers?  This is at a local ROCK shop!  We also saw a truck with its bed full of antlers parked in front of another shop every day.  Just remember, the antlers fall off every year so all they have to do is collect them.  This is not mass deer killing in Custer.

Grandma had found out that there was a local junior ranger program.  We went to check it out and found out that they were having an activity right at that time!  It was Buffalo painting!  Dillon, Kayda and Carson were the only ones there. 

They told us of different uses for the different body parts of the Bison.  That lovely balloon looking thing is actually a bladder.  They used it mostly to carry water.  It was interesting to touch, it felt like very thin paper mache.

The day we headed down to Rapid City we were mostly going to visit Old MacDonald's Farm.  Who wouldn't want to go see and touch baby animals?

The animals all knew the sound of the feed dispensers.  As soon as you started moving it animals of all kinds would rush to be near you.

This mama goat ended up being quite the bully.  She actually head butted Owen to get food.

Papa thought it was funny to splash water at all the kids...

Carson decided to get him back!

 

 Lets go!  Lets go! Lets go!

They actually had a pig race!  The kids had a blast watching it but it was over really quickly.  There must be some good grub at the end!

Notice the pigs' names?  Hot dog won.

 

 These draft horses are huge!  Kayda was quite impressed!

 Waiting for the tractor train ride!

 

 

 Aunt Kirsten had to distract the nanny goat so that the kids could eat.

 Kayda's goal in life is to have a farm.  She is learning to be more dominant with the animals.  here she is shooing off the two kids so that she could feed the smallest goat.

 She would cup her hands around its mouth so that the other goats couldn't steal the food.

Another night we got to enjoy a South Dakota thunder storm.  It started out by getting a little cloudy and a little breezy.  We watched as it got darker out in the distance. The lightning started coming and the thunder came echoing through the hills.  It didn't sound like thunder I've heard back home.  The view from the back patio was fantastic.  We watched the lightning flash across the distant hills.  Before we knew it the rain came, along with the lightning.  It ended up right on top of us and even knocked the power out a few times.  The kids had a great time watching until it got too close.  Then they got nervous.  Once it started raining we were going to be inside anyway.  The rain here, little as there has been, is amazing.  The drops are considerably bigger and heavier than the rain we get at home.  It also comes and is gone in less than 30 minutes.

 

 

 Dillon was selling "tickets" to watch the lightning show.

As you can see, the view is incredible.  Though I only caught a few flashes... it was quite the thing to watch!

 Thursday while we were waiting for Daddy to get here (10:30pm) we decided to visit the Cosmos Mystery Area and the Dinosaur Museum.  Kayda stayed home and had some downtime with Grandma.  The Cosmos mystery area was.... interesting.  They have weighted down trees to form the illusion of "hot spots" and they built cabins at a slant.  Optical illusion, magnetic pull, vortex.... whatever people want to call it, my body did not like it.

 I was fine until I got up to the cabin.  I started feeling a little weird before getting to it, when I got inside it flat out made me feel ill.  Dillon is standing straight up and down.

 He was asked to try to roll the ball to her...  It kept going back to him instead.

 All Papa did was pick up his legs.  Sorry, it's blurry.

She had Owen sit in this chair called the "truth chair".  He was told that if he told any lies that when she let go he would fall forward, if he told the truth the chair would fall back against the wall.  Lucky for him it fell back against the wall when she let go.

 When we were done there we took a short trip down the road to the dinosaur museum.  It turned out to be pretty cool!  They had a whole bunch of dinosaur "heads" so you could get a good idea of what they looked like.  A collection of eggs varying from the elephant bird which had an egg not much smaller than a bowling ball (the bird was apparently some 10 feet tall) to a hummingbird egg which, as you can imagine, is tiny.  They had tons of other fun things to look at as well.

 One of those fun things were a mirror maze.  It was all composed of equilateral triangles and the mirrors were lined up with the grout lines on the floor.  I walked around with my hands out because in some cases it was very difficult to figure out which way to go.  Both Carson and Raelle managed to smash their heads against a mirror.

 This was the "fossil dig" the kids had a great time revealing the various bones.

 There was a movie and then there was minigolf!  It was tons of fun!  Mainly because we were the only ones there so we got to play however we wanted.  This meant that some of them moved backwards through the course, others randomly went to whichever hole they wanted and still others, such as Carson, played it more like it was hockey.

 

 Even the adults had a good time!  Though we played more along the way it was intended.

It was a great day that definitely wore everybody out.  Fortunately I was able to get kids in bed and Carson asleep early enough to make the trek with Papa to get Daddy from the airport.  Daddy arrived Thursday night and then Aunt Ayana and Uncle Justin arrived Saturday morning (their Friday night flight was cancelled in Salt Lake due to lightning storms).