Vacation 2016 - Devils Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the drive home

As mentioned in the last blog, our Thursday night was spent in Graybull, Wyoming in this cute little straight-from-the-fifties motel.....

Here is our rental car parked near our room.  Notice the beautiful hanging baskets of flowers!
 

we had a cute little table just outside our door where we ate our breakfast

 Then, on to Devil's Tower....


It is really an incredible sight!

 

 Surrounding Devil's Tower is beautiful forest

 

 And, a huge field of prairie dogs!


Mount Rushmore was about two hours later....


 Also, impressive!
 

 
 And it had a really cool tunnel on the highway leading into Keystone, the closest town to Rushmore.
 

 We ate dinner at a Culvers in Rapid City and then drove to Kadoka, South Dakota to our hotel for Friday night.


 It was really in the middle of nowhere!

In fact, most of our drive on Saturday, July 9th, was through the middle of nowhere as we angled down on state roads towards home. 


 Happily, it was FLAT - no scary mountain roads.


Just outside of Kadoka we saw landscape that was probably the tail end of of the Badlands area (never having been to the Badlands, I can't be sure but I bet it is so)

 

Even so, there a certain beauty to South Dakota and Nebraska

 In Lincoln, Nebraska, we made a short visit to Alan Williams, one of Steve's friends from high school band.  I first met Alan when I joined the Cougar Band carpool.  

Here we are with Steve holding a baritone that Alan gave to Steve!

Alan's life and Steve's, after BYU marching band, took remarkably similar routes - service in the Army, law school.  Alan stayed in reserves longer than Steve and he also practiced law both in Utah and in Nebraska.  It wasn't until a couple of months ago, however, that the two reunited after over 40 years. 

Elise's birthday was on July 9th so we stopped to celebrate her birthday dinner at a Texas Roadhouse in St. Joseph, Missouri.  We admired a terrific thunder storm from afar over southwest Kansas City.  We avoided being sideswiped by a careless semi.  And we pulled into our driveway right around midnight.

Dogs were SO happy to see us!

(Bones is in the photo because Sarah stayed at the house to take care of the dogs and, of course, brought her dogs with her.)

So, our journey was now over.  What a trip!