These are a Few of (Brennan's) Favorite Things!

Cathy: I'm asking (bugging) each member of the family to talk about some of their favorite things about our vacation on the blog. I snagged Brennan first. Here are some pictures, with his own quirky captions. This is part one, with part two soon. Enjoy! And give him feedback please. :)

Brennan: We got to go on a tour of San Francisco. Normal, right? Until we found out it was one of those ducky boats from WWII. (ed. note: it was a WWII amphibious vehicle) And they gave everyone on the boat these duck-billed things called Quackers, that we could blow at everybody. We made tons of duck noises with it. At the end, I felt as if I was some sort of duck.


I even got to drive the thing! And I only hit six boats (ed.note: he wanted to let people know that he's just kidding)
Ah! Giant jelly beans. As far as the eye can see!
(ed. note: our tour of the Jelly Belly Factory in California)


Here's a guy who can swallow his nose at Ripley's Believe it or Not. After this, my lips were hurting.

We kids loved the hotel pools!
The rodeo was one of my favorite things on the vacation. All the kids under 12 got to chase two calves with ribbons on their tails. If you caught them first, you won a prize. The first prize was some ride up a mountain. The second prize was a blizzard at dairy queen. Unfortunately, we didn't win.

We're home! (after a brief Laura Ingalls detour)

We're safely home, and Lucky is doing backflips in excitement. And by the way, in case anyone was ready to sic the SPCA on us, I did have a college student come by everyday to feed her and check on her.

We pulled into Joliet ridiculously late. We would have gotten home sooner, but when driving through eastern South Dakota Friday night (after a day at Mt. Rushmore and vicinity) I happened to notice that De Smet --Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie -- was just a short detour north of the interstate. (Well, it was actually about 50 miles away, but hey! compared to our recent treks, that's short!) So Mark good-naturedly turned north; we got a hotel there, and woke up Saturday expecting to spend an hour or two checking out the Laura sites.

Instead we spent most of the day. For a huge Laura-lover like me, it was magical to see the two houses she lived in there, to walk the actual prairie land she did, and see so many sights discussed in the books. And the Ingalls homestead is set up so charmingly that Mark and the kids loved it as well. We rode a covered wagon, and saw a one-room schoolhouse (complete with sweet, elderly school teacher) dressed up in period bonnets and hats, walked through a dugout, a shanty, and a hay-covered barn like Laura had, and got to enjoy the animals they keep on the site -- the cow and calf, horse and foal, ponies, and (my kid's favorite) a litter of kittens up in the barn loft that they could climb up and play with.

We don't regret the visit, since it ended up being one of the highlights of all whole trip. But we probably stayed a tad too long, and the last hour or two of driving tonight was tough. But we're safely home now, and here's some pics. And as much as I'd like to write more, I think I'm going to ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Loving up the kittens. Within 5 minutes the kids had picked their favorites and named them.
Nate shows off the latest in prairie wear.

Can you tell I'm enjoying myself?

Patting the Shetland pony.

The reproduction of the house Pa Ingalls built outside De Smet.

Annie's Thoughts

Hey, where did all those "Annie's Thoughts" go to? There was only Mom and Dad's (Cathy and Mark) posts around for a while. The reason is that We always got to the hotel late, and so I had to go to sleep because it was too late. *Sighs wearily*
Oh well. Enough of that. We reached Devils tower today! It was pretty fun.

Here's a pic thats kind of cute.

We found a few prairie dogs. Aren't they cute?

Here's Devils Tower! Cool huh?

My toe started bleeding after I hit it. I used that excuse to go back to the car. I was really tired!
*stars at pic* I have no idea how that picture got in there. *covers it up*

Devils tower was fun for all of us. We loved it and the sights were great.

Too bad we didn't run into any other animals.

Bye!

Annie.

More on that Yellowstone wildfire

We're wondering if our family brings bad luck when we travel. Both Yellowstone and Yosemite had wildfires on the day we visited them. And there was an earthquake in southern California the same morning we were driving out of there. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if we just stayed put in Joliet next summer?

Unlike the Yosemite wildfire, the Yellowstone wildfire didn't make the news, but it sure impressed the heck out of us. This morning I found out that it's already burned 2000 acres in the Shoshone Forest east of Yellowstone, and that we actually passed only three miles south of it yesterday, on the road from Yellowstone to Cody. The people in Cody seemed unimpressed by it, despite the smoke and ash in the air at the rodeo last night. Wildfires around Yellowstone aren't that unusual at this time of year, we were told. But it's a pretty crazy experience for us Illinoisans. Here's some more pics of the fire from the road:

Yellowstone, Rodeos, and yet another wildfire

Wyoming has redeemed itself. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the southern section that I-80 bisects, but northern-western Wyoming, with Yellowstone? Spectacular. This picture doesn't do it justice.



Besides the gorgeous views, Yellowstone also has the geysers. We saw Old Faithful of course (and very luckily arrived just five minutes before she blew) but our favorite was the section where you can walk out on board walks and watch the bubbling hot springs. Annie was in charge of the camera and took some fabulous pictures.


We finished the day attending the "World Famous Cody Nite Rodeo" (yes, they spell it that way.) Cute, a bit hokey, but it had enough real rodeo things (barrel racing, bull riding, bronco riding, calf roping, bulldogging) to be authentically Western. The kids loved it.

We also came close to yet another wildfire! This one was near Yellowstone, about 20 miles north of the road we took out of the park. There was no danger on our road, but the orange and yellow smoke clouds looming to our north were amazing.

85 miles from Yellowstone

We woke up this morning in California's Central Valley, and are hitting our beds in central Idaho. In between we experienced:

- The Mojave desert (we now know what 115 degrees feels like)

- A 25-minute detour off Interstate 15 to see the Las Vegas Strip (One wacky town. The pic below is of the Faux French casino, complete with mini-Eiffel Tower)

- A 30-mile slice of northwest Arizona, and though it is some 100 miles west of the actual Grand Canyon, looked awfully Grand Canyon-ish to me. Two Pics below)

Mark and I are just crazy enough that we briefly entertained the notion of somehow including a quick look at the real Grand Canyon in our long driving day today. Brennan knocked some sense into us. "We need something to look forward to on our next road trip," he sensibly remarked.

Sequoias: the REALLY big trees!

We're off to Rexburg, Idaho today, which is near Yellowstone, so we have a long day of driving ahead of us. But I needed to post a few pics (no time for commentary) of our time in Sequoia National Park, where we saw the biggest trees in the world! The last picture is of a wild mule deer we saw near our car. But our biggest wildlife excitement was from seeing a young bear scamper across the road ahead of us! (Don't worry, we were safely in our car.) We didn't snap a picture, but it was quite cool.