South Dakota 2007 Days 6 and 7
Thursday, June 14th: As luck would have it, Thursday was warmer than the previous two mornings had been. By the time we hit the road, around 10:00, it was already up in the mid 70s. Of course, our first stop of the morning was the payphone in Keystone to make our daily call into Ford. The phone call to Ford was not good. To say Bill was fuming when he got back into the car would be an understatement. Apparently there was some sort of mess up when the parts had been ordered the day before and they didn't come in. The truck wouldn't be done until Friday. Unbeknownst until now to the Ford people, we were supposed to leave on Friday morning. This news warranted a visit to our (now) good friend Eric at McKie Ford in Rapid City. The rental car was costing us $75 per day, and that was at a discounted rate because the lady at Enterprise took pity on me when she found out we were on vacation. On top of the cost of the truck repairs (that weren't under warranty) we were also looking at a minimum of $300 for the rental car. Most of the 20 minute ride to Ford was in silence. We finally agreed that we were going to ask that Ford pick up the cost of the rental car. The screw up was on them and it was going to cost us 2 extra days with the rental if we didn't return it by noon that day. We get to Ford and Bill seeks out Eric and the mechanic working on our truck. He wants to see the damage they are telling us we have and find out why they didn't know all of this yesterday when they supposedly had "everything taken apart". After the talk with the mechanic, we are out ANOTHER $600 as he shows Bill just how fried our rear brakes are - the ones Eric told us we would be able to get home on. All in all, the reapairs are going to run $1800. Ford agreed to pay for our rental car, so there was a bit of a relief. We had no other choice but to suck it up and take the hit on the repairs.
That taken care of, we head for the waterpark. We got there around 11:00 and it was a beautiful day. The temps were near 80 that day and it was breezy. The park wasn't crowded and there was no wait on the slides. Everyone gets changed and I stop in the little shop to buy some suncreen. Bill takes the kids down a slide while I am in the store. We meet up, towel off, spray on sun protection, and head for the slides. I guess Caty didn't like her ride down with Bill, but I took her up anyway and told her she could ride down with me. She was a nervous wreck the whole time, whimpering and "whooooooa"ing the whole way down. The slide was really tame and I held her up over my head when we hit the water so she wouldn't go under. Much to her dismay, I made her go down a 2nd time. This time we tried a different slide (there were 4 slides at that attraction). When I had gotten to the bottom the first time, the guard told me that I had to ride one of the first two slides if she was going to ride with me. So when we get to the top I ask the guard up there which slide is the most kid-friendly. She looks at me like I've sprouted a 2nd head and offers no suggestions. Okaaaaaaaaaaay........I pick slide number 1. Wrong choice. Slide number one has a big drop that increases your speed and sends you flying into a high banking curve. Upon landing after the drop, Caty flew out of my arms and we hit that curve out of control, on our backs. She is screaming and frantic after that. I managed to reel her in back to me and get her over my head before hitting the water. That was it for her, though. No more slides. The rest of the day Bill and I spent "babysitting" her in the 3' pool while the other one was on the slides with the boys. The park was really fun, despite not being able to ride the slides most of the day (I stayed with Caty for the most part). Billy tended to hang out in the pool with Caty and I and Alex and Bill did the slides. There was one slide that you rode in innertubes and another slide that was three really big, steep drops. That one was called The Bonzai and was the "speed slide". I rode all the slides with Alex over the course of the day As it turned out, my favorite slide was the one by the 3' pool where Caty was hanging out. It was just a wide, flat slide, but it was fun. After awhile the boys started doing stunts down them:
It doesn't look that stunt-like, but Bill actually ended up going in on his stomach, feet first. This picture was taken in the middle of a roll. We spent 6 hours at the waterpark that day. We were all waterlogged and (we thought) a bit sunburned.
Later that evening, we realized just how sunburned we had gotten. Even though we had been reapplying the sunscreen, everyone got pretty fried. Billy, unfortunately, got the worst of it. He ended up with 2nd degree burns on his shoulders that blistered and cracked and peeled and looked really nasty until yesterday. He was actually asking for lotion. If you know Billy, you know how much he despises lotion and the lengths he will go to to avoid having to put it on. The only thing I can think of as to why he got burned so much more badly than the rest of us was that he had eczema patches on his shoulders and back and maybe they didn't absorb the sunscreen. He was really hurting and Bill and I felt like dogs that he was so burned and in pain.
That night, we head into Hill City to pick up some more
groceries and treat ourselves to grilled steaks and fried potatoes for dinner. It's a lazy night around the fire. I haven't mentioned it before, but the nights are very chilly. Temperatures routinely drop into the low 50s over night and since were in a non-climate controlled camper, we look a little goofy as we head into bed. Bill captured my efforts to read by firelight each night. I was so close to finishing that book! Anyway, the way you see Caty and I bundled up is the way we went to bed each night - flannel pants, hoodies, and socks. I'm sure we were a sight =)
Friday, June 15th: It's truck pick up day! YAY!!!! We get up and shower, have a quick breakfast, and take off for Mt Rushmore. We've been driving past it every day since we've been there and are finally going to park and go in and check out the features of the place (aside from the obvious one). It's a pretty cool place. We read about the history of Gutzon Borglum - the sculptor, and about how it is made and why he chose the presidents that he did. We watch a short film about the building process. Most of it was carved using dynamite. The museum has models and castings and different versions of the sculpture that Borglum had created and rejected. An interesting fact - Thomas Jefferson was originally supposed to be over Washington's right shoulder, but when they started blasting they found there wasn't enough hard granite available to make his head. They blew off what they had started and stuck him in over Washington's other shoulder instead, pushing Lincoln over to where he is now.
All of the loose rock underneath is the stuff that was blasted off to make the sculpture. Another cool feature of the park is the flags. There are 13, four sided granite pillars with a state flag at the top of each side. At eye level is the name of the state, the number it was made part of the Union, and the date it was accepted into the Union.
As you can probably guess, the place we spent the most time in at Mt Rushmore was the gift shop. We loaded up on souveniers for our families and then called it a day. We started our now daily trip into Rapid City. We stopped in Keystone to call Ford and they told us it would be ready by 3:00. It was 12:30. We stopped for lunch at Ruby Tuesdays (a margarita has never tasted better, I tell ya!), drove to a dinosaur park off the beaten path (only Bill and Caty got out to look at it), and found a coffeehouse that offered free internet with a cup o' joe. We needed to find and book a campground for Saturday night. We sat down in the cafe with our map and tried to figure out a good place to stop for the night. We knew we were going to take the "Loop" through Badlands National Park and stop at Wall Drug on the drive home. We also knew that we wanted to break up the trip as we had on the way out - 10 or so hours the first day and 6 or so the next. We decide to stop in a small town just east of LaCrosse, Wisconsin - about an 11 hour drive if we don't stop. We book the campground and head to Ford. Miraculously, the truck is finished when we get there. We move all of our crap out the pick-up and back into the Expedition, pay, return the rental truck, and head back for our campground.
We just hang out at the site, starting to pack up what we can. We are bent and determined to get up at 7:00 the next morning and get out of there quickly. We get everything packed up, but it all gets stored in the camper while we are driving so loading up and hitting the road will have to wait until Saturday morning.
That taken care of, we head for the waterpark. We got there around 11:00 and it was a beautiful day. The temps were near 80 that day and it was breezy. The park wasn't crowded and there was no wait on the slides. Everyone gets changed and I stop in the little shop to buy some suncreen. Bill takes the kids down a slide while I am in the store. We meet up, towel off, spray on sun protection, and head for the slides. I guess Caty didn't like her ride down with Bill, but I took her up anyway and told her she could ride down with me. She was a nervous wreck the whole time, whimpering and "whooooooa"ing the whole way down. The slide was really tame and I held her up over my head when we hit the water so she wouldn't go under. Much to her dismay, I made her go down a 2nd time. This time we tried a different slide (there were 4 slides at that attraction). When I had gotten to the bottom the first time, the guard told me that I had to ride one of the first two slides if she was going to ride with me. So when we get to the top I ask the guard up there which slide is the most kid-friendly. She looks at me like I've sprouted a 2nd head and offers no suggestions. Okaaaaaaaaaaay........I pick slide number 1. Wrong choice. Slide number one has a big drop that increases your speed and sends you flying into a high banking curve. Upon landing after the drop, Caty flew out of my arms and we hit that curve out of control, on our backs. She is screaming and frantic after that. I managed to reel her in back to me and get her over my head before hitting the water. That was it for her, though. No more slides. The rest of the day Bill and I spent "babysitting" her in the 3' pool while the other one was on the slides with the boys. The park was really fun, despite not being able to ride the slides most of the day (I stayed with Caty for the most part). Billy tended to hang out in the pool with Caty and I and Alex and Bill did the slides. There was one slide that you rode in innertubes and another slide that was three really big, steep drops. That one was called The Bonzai and was the "speed slide". I rode all the slides with Alex over the course of the day As it turned out, my favorite slide was the one by the 3' pool where Caty was hanging out. It was just a wide, flat slide, but it was fun. After awhile the boys started doing stunts down them:
It doesn't look that stunt-like, but Bill actually ended up going in on his stomach, feet first. This picture was taken in the middle of a roll. We spent 6 hours at the waterpark that day. We were all waterlogged and (we thought) a bit sunburned.
Later that evening, we realized just how sunburned we had gotten. Even though we had been reapplying the sunscreen, everyone got pretty fried. Billy, unfortunately, got the worst of it. He ended up with 2nd degree burns on his shoulders that blistered and cracked and peeled and looked really nasty until yesterday. He was actually asking for lotion. If you know Billy, you know how much he despises lotion and the lengths he will go to to avoid having to put it on. The only thing I can think of as to why he got burned so much more badly than the rest of us was that he had eczema patches on his shoulders and back and maybe they didn't absorb the sunscreen. He was really hurting and Bill and I felt like dogs that he was so burned and in pain.
That night, we head into Hill City to pick up some more
groceries and treat ourselves to grilled steaks and fried potatoes for dinner. It's a lazy night around the fire. I haven't mentioned it before, but the nights are very chilly. Temperatures routinely drop into the low 50s over night and since were in a non-climate controlled camper, we look a little goofy as we head into bed. Bill captured my efforts to read by firelight each night. I was so close to finishing that book! Anyway, the way you see Caty and I bundled up is the way we went to bed each night - flannel pants, hoodies, and socks. I'm sure we were a sight =)Friday, June 15th: It's truck pick up day! YAY!!!! We get up and shower, have a quick breakfast, and take off for Mt Rushmore. We've been driving past it every day since we've been there and are finally going to park and go in and check out the features of the place (aside from the obvious one). It's a pretty cool place. We read about the history of Gutzon Borglum - the sculptor, and about how it is made and why he chose the presidents that he did. We watch a short film about the building process. Most of it was carved using dynamite. The museum has models and castings and different versions of the sculpture that Borglum had created and rejected. An interesting fact - Thomas Jefferson was originally supposed to be over Washington's right shoulder, but when they started blasting they found there wasn't enough hard granite available to make his head. They blew off what they had started and stuck him in over Washington's other shoulder instead, pushing Lincoln over to where he is now.
All of the loose rock underneath is the stuff that was blasted off to make the sculpture. Another cool feature of the park is the flags. There are 13, four sided granite pillars with a state flag at the top of each side. At eye level is the name of the state, the number it was made part of the Union, and the date it was accepted into the Union.As you can probably guess, the place we spent the most time in at Mt Rushmore was the gift shop. We loaded up on souveniers for our families and then called it a day. We started our now daily trip into Rapid City. We stopped in Keystone to call Ford and they told us it would be ready by 3:00. It was 12:30. We stopped for lunch at Ruby Tuesdays (a margarita has never tasted better, I tell ya!), drove to a dinosaur park off the beaten path (only Bill and Caty got out to look at it), and found a coffeehouse that offered free internet with a cup o' joe. We needed to find and book a campground for Saturday night. We sat down in the cafe with our map and tried to figure out a good place to stop for the night. We knew we were going to take the "Loop" through Badlands National Park and stop at Wall Drug on the drive home. We also knew that we wanted to break up the trip as we had on the way out - 10 or so hours the first day and 6 or so the next. We decide to stop in a small town just east of LaCrosse, Wisconsin - about an 11 hour drive if we don't stop. We book the campground and head to Ford. Miraculously, the truck is finished when we get there. We move all of our crap out the pick-up and back into the Expedition, pay, return the rental truck, and head back for our campground.
We just hang out at the site, starting to pack up what we can. We are bent and determined to get up at 7:00 the next morning and get out of there quickly. We get everything packed up, but it all gets stored in the camper while we are driving so loading up and hitting the road will have to wait until Saturday morning.
posted by Renfield at 11:02 AM
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