Bear Country USA - our first adventure for the day! We got an early start so the line wasn't long at all! We have heard that it could be really backed up - bumper to bumper - waiting to see all of the bears/animals roaming.
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| getting ready to enter the bear habitat |
These 2 bears were pretty funny. They were at the very end of our bear habitat loop (notice the cattle grates). Both bears were pacing back and forth in the opposite direction. This allowed one car to pass through at a time. They seemed to be guarding the gate.
After driving through the park, we entered the "zoo" area and admired the smaller animals. We especially loved watching the baby bears interact with each other and the crowd.
Katie was super excited to find the otter house...only to see him scurry into his log and disappear for the remaining time we were there. Unfortunately, the waterfall wasn't running so the otter had no place to play. When we drove by the park later in the week, we saw that the water was running and even thought of stopping back in so we could see if the otter was out! We didn't stop however.
The kids had fun spending some souvenir money in the big Bear Country USA gift shop! This was a definite highlight of our trip.
We drove past Mt Rushmore to start our scenic drive. Our drive included Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road. The drive was a long one, but it was beautiful! Once again, we were thankful that the weather was a bit cooler and that we traveled in early June. We couldn't imagine driving those roads in the peak of tourist season! Very few other cars - it was a great drive with some amazing scenery!!
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I spy George's nose!
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| Evidently it is hard to walk on cattle grates! |
We read a book a few years ago about Scaredy Squirrel playing "dead squirrel" to protect himself. Playing Dead Squirrel is now on our list of photos for the scavenger hunt for every vacation. This is one that the kids look forward to doing and they try to come up with some fun, creative ways! Here they are on the last tunnel before heading back to Mt Rushmore. We started and stopped a 1/2 dozen times before finally getting this picture! The second picture is of them hopping up as soon as we snapped the picture! If you look closely, you can see Mt Rushmore through the cave and trees.
While at Mt Rushmore, we stopped in the gift shop to meet Nick Clifford. He was one of the original carvers of the mountain. He worked on Roosevelt and Lincoln.
Another one of our photo scavenger hunt items - "Find the Illinois Flag in the state of South Dakota". The kids figured out this one when they saw the multitude of flags at Mt Rushmore. So, here was Matt's wonderful picture plan (see below)...only, the flag wasn't cooperating with us! It was all raveled up! Well, we went ahead and took the picture anyways and knew we'd have a story to tell.
One of our on going games was the license plate game. We were so excited to pull into the Mt Rushmore parking garage - knowing that we would probably clear the board with all of the remaining state plates. When we left we drove through every section and we couldn't believe how vacant they were!! There were well under 75 cars in the 6+ parking areas. We were laughing by the end though as we saw THREE Alaska plates throughout the parking areas!!
We left Mt Rushmore and went in search of food. We ended up at a Subway in Keystone. That is where we took these last 2 pictures (after shopping at Rushmore Mountain Taffy Shop!).
