Mt. St. Presidents

Over Memorial Day weekend we embarked on a grand adventure - a 3 night RV trip to South Dakota with our (really kind, generous, forgiving) friends, the Marshalls.

We left Fri. afternoon and drove up to Glendoe Reservoir in WY. We pulled in to our beautiful site that backed up to the lake just in time to grill hamburgers for dinner.

JZ and Caden taking a nap in the back of the motorhome on the drive up

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast...

...and drove up to Devil's Tower in South Dakota. What did we do to keep us entertained while driving? Well, the Marshall's travel in style - so we got to watch movies, play games, help drive...

...and take naps.


Once we got to Devil's Tower we walked around it and took lots of pictures of ourselves to prove we were there.


That evening we went to Deadwood, SD. We had dinner, shopped, and gambled a little. JZ even found a great cowboy hat!

Ethan thought it was nice too!

The next morning we went to Mt. Rushmore!

If it looks like Caden is not happy to be at Mt. St. Presidents, it's because he wasn't. By this point he was on the verge of total meltdown. He was ready for a nap, so we layed him down in the stroller as we walked along the Presidents' Trail. There are about a million stairs, so "King Caden" had to be carried up and down all of them.


After we left Rushmore we went to Rushmore Cave. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into! We originally planned on carrying Caden in the backpack, but the cave was too low and narrow. Instead we (and by that I mean JZ ) had to carry him - through the low overhangs, up and down the stairs, and even up a ladder. Nice work JZ! Luckily, Caden thought the cave was FUNNY!

Actually, it was probably Kaila and Ethan that were super funny (and cute too!)



The cave was full of limestone, but it also had some stalactites.


After we finished the cave, we drove by Crazy Horse Monument - we decided that since we could see it from the road we didn't need to pay to go in.

The next day we (sadly) had to make the long drive home. At lunchtime we stopped at a park to grill some hot dogs and let the kids run around and play. Caden had a great time playing on the playground and practicing his walking.

We had a wonderful adventure to South Dakota. I have to say that I was really nervous to go. There were 7 of us in one motorhome, and I was worried that Caden would cry, wake up at night, not sleep, and keep everyone else up. In reality, he did those things, but it was not as bad as I thought. He struggled to go to sleep with people looking at him, and sleeping in the pack-and-play in between our beds. He did wake up once at night, but he quickly went back to sleep. The Marshalls said they knew what they were getting into when they invited us - they have two kiddos themselves. All in all Caden was awesome and I could not have asked for more out of him. Ok, maybe to sleep a little later in the morning. He would wake up around 6 and instead of going back to sleep like I'm sure he does at home, he sat up, saw us, and wanted to play. Every morning we would wake up to him giggling at us and throwing his blanets and pacifier at us. Hard to be upset at a smiling Caden boy in the morning!

We had a wonderful trip. I totally forsee us doing something like this again - but we may wait until Caden can walk and watch DVDs!