Day 7

August 9, 2014

Before I get started on what we are doing I feel the need to pay homage to two very good friends, Mike and Liela Hermanson.  They did many years of RV-ing, and taught us so much when we purchased our travel trailer.  Liela spent many hours giving me tips.  When we went on our first trip, she purchased two wine glasses for us to toast our first night out and embroidered flour sack dish towels and an apron for our RV.  I had her sign them so now when I use one of them, I have the sweet signature of "Liela Mae" to remind me of how much I treasured my time with her.  Thank you Liela and Mike.

Across the street there is a sweet mare, Little Bit, in front of a home.  The owner of the camp told me yesterday that she loves for folks to bring her apples, so that is how I started my day... spoiling Little Bit with her first apple of the day.  As you can see, she is beautiful.

We drove up to Mt Rushmore, which was a really beautiful drive.  There have been a lot of improvements to the actual park, as we learned from the ranger talk.  Here are the pictures with captions below.

The monument.  There were plans originally to show their bodies down to the waist as you see in the scale plaster model in the next photo.  However, the lower parts of the stone below the faces had too much mica content and would not hold a carving.  This plaster model is displayed the the sculptor's studio.

Picnic lunch on the shores of beautiful Horsethief Lake.

Back to the camp after lunch.  There was a thunder storm with rain and small hail. Cooper hates that sound.  Thought the rumbling of the motorcycles had gotten him a bit calmer but I guess not.  Bring on the liquid children's benedryl!

The afternoon was spent bathing and drying the dogs, doing a load of laundry and sitting on the office porch watching the stream of bikers.

The afternoon cleared off and the pups enjoyed their time outside in their pen.  Emma was totally enthralled with the bugs crawling around on the ground beside the dog rug.  She provided the entertainment for a while.

Dinner was beef tips and noodles (one of the meals Jim prepared ahead) along with wine.  No campfire because a big storm blew up again so we stayed inside to watch a DVD.