We are home! Made it safe and sound Friday the 12th of June. After 9,500 miles and 66 days we are comfortable looking out our windows at the St Joseph river. It was a tremendous trip! We packed a lot into it and we are still happily married!
There are a few places we need to tell you about to finish off our saga. We left off telling you about the Badlands. The last day in South Dakota we drove back west about 2 hours into Wyoming to see Devil's Tower. For those of you who remember the movie Close Encounters, this picture is for you!
Over 1,000 feet tall this National Monument was the very first to be designated by President Roosevelt. It is massive and we spent several hours there. Walked around the base of it. Watched some rock climbers on the face of it too.
There are two in this picture, one in blue and the other standing on that broken off chunk of rock.
On the left side of this picture, you can see what looks like a rope or long stick in the crevice. It is actually what remains of a ladder that was used by the very first people to scale Devils Tower, this group of people included Will Rogers in 1893.
Such beautiful countryside
cute prairie dogs
there must have been a 100 of them.
We were really glad we took the time to visit Devil's Tower. We suggest you add this to your list of places to check out.
Next day we headed east again, stopped in Mitchell, South Dakota. Now, Mitchell is not a big town and is really only known for one thing, the Corn Palace. It's been around awhile and the town uses it as a tourist draw. We only stayed one night, but we got there early enough to go into town and check it out. The reason it is called the Corn Palace is because the exterior and the interior of the building are decorated with ears of corn. They use over 750,000 bushels of corn each year to decorate the murals!
They were in the process of redecorating it, normally there are spires atop and more areas are filled in
Amazing what they can do with a corn cob
By this time we can smell Indiana, but we have one more place to visit and it is an important one! We have friends, Craig and Anne Johnsen, that we knew when we were stationed in Denver and Sacramento. They live just outside Minneapolis, Mn. Rog and Craig went to the same Air Force Techinical school in Denver back in 1977. So we go way back. However, we hadn't seen them since they visited us about 20 years ago. We figured it was high time we saw them again. They surprised us with a river boat ride down the Mississippi. We had a great time, and Rog even got some shots of a bald eagle. We are so glad we took a couple extra days to visit Craig and Anne.
Craig, Anne and Rog
Minneapolis from the Mississippi
Now we are home and we have one more picture to show you that pretty much says it all. It's always great to travel, but, its always nice to come home too. This trip was all about seeing Rhonda and Ivan, that's what started the planning, then we threw in stopping to see Leo and Thelma and then Craig and Anne. The beauty of our national parks along the way were bonus and we really enjoyed that part too.
What a great greeting from our grandsons Logan and Justis!
Until next time everyone, take care and God Bless!
Rog and Nita
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