Travels and More!: Rapid City, SD

Objective: Drive from South Dakota (with a quick side trip to Oklahoma) to Alaska and see how many stamps we can get in the National Park passport book along the way.
Traveling by Luna (AKA Mayo's Toyota Sequoia)
Occupants - 4 humans, 3 fur babies

July 2: We began this particular shenanigan in Rapid City, South Dakota. Mayo traveled from Minnesota with our demon love child Jewel (HAHA) and Woody and Alex traveled from Wyoming to Rapid with Caty and Hayden McAdams (Woody's Bestie and Niece). We decided to enjoy the benefits of an Air BnB rental for the three days we were in Rapid, and after a short delay Woody and crew got all set up in the BnB. Mayo and Jewel arrived shortly after.

July 3: We all loaded in the Sequoia and headed to the Badlands. Such beautiful country. We enjoyed a driving sight-seeing tour with lots of stops for pictures. Back to the BnB house for the evening and introduced Mayo to Fast and Furious 7.

Huge herd in the middle of the road!

July 4: This was a busy day but a great one - first a trip to Wind Cave National Park. A tour through the cave was amazing with a lot of great pictures to be taken. Afterwards we went to Jewel Cave National Monument. We were unable to go through the cave but we were able to (survive) hike the 3.5 mile Canyons Trail around the park.
We dined at a the Bobkats Purple Pie Place (great food!) and then ended the day with a stop at the Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore. On the way back to the BnB, we enjoyed the many fireworks displays and slept like we had topped 10 miles that day (according to Caty's step app on her phone).

Box Work

Teddy Roosevelt showed up!

KONG CREW!

We did it!!

Bead collection at the Crazy Horse Museum

Mt. Rushmore!

The end of a LONG day :)

July 5: This was a pack and head out day. We really pulled out our Tetris skills on this one. We are packed to the gills in Luna and everything has its place. We drove to Belleville, KS on our way to Gerty, OK for our quick side trip.

July 6, 7 & 8: We arrived at Gerty, OK to enjoy a couple of days of celebration with Segue and Brian (Grant) Morgan for their wedding. We all agreed that this may be the most entertaining wedding we have ever attended. The weather was hot and ridiculously humid (OMG!) and we all decided that moving north in the very near future was necessary. Sleeping in the tents was easier than we anticipated, the food was amazing and the hospitality was great. The dogs greatly enjoyed all the space to run (when we let them out of the chicken coop).

Jewel painted the hay bale for the wedding :)

#happilyeveralaska

Climbing hay bales (because why not??)

Alaska Bunch

The Beautiful Bride

July 8 & 9: We drove from Gerty, OK to Fort Collins, CO. We have decided that those that warned us about Kansas and Nebraska being flat and boring have not traveled the Texas Panhandle. Everyone heaved a big sigh of relief when we hit the Tex-Line and moved into New Mexico. It was a weird and disjointed trip until we saw the welcomed signs of I-25 and Colorado. We spent a nice night in Trinidad.

We got a stamp in the National Park Passport book at the Great Sand Dunes National Park (Sand Dunes in the middle of Colorado?!?! What?!?!). The pups did not enjoy the hot sand but did enjoy cooling down in the creek before getting back in the car. We drove through the Garden of the Gods, north of Colorado Springs, before settling in for the night in Fort Collins, CO.