We originally were to stay the night in western PA and a night in MD. We decided to drive 9+ hours and get home on a Friday night instead of Sunday afternoon. Our trip ends with us racing home. Until next year. Only 42 more weeks to go until we begin our next big adventure.
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Michigan, we are here!
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I feel a bit bad for Indiana. We were going to spend the day but decided to truck on through to Michigan instead. Maybe on next years trip we will stay here. Yes, we are already planning next years trip. I have some picture of the “lake” at the campsite which the boys loved and Sean’s birthday trip to Great Wolf Lodge.
Play Time
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Time for a visit with the cousins! We parked our trailer and stayed in a hotel near the cousins. This allowed the kids to have a great time, but also to have some separate down time. One of the highlights was going to Dave & Busters for an early birthday treat for Sean. His actual birthday isn’t for several more days and we will be in Michigan at that time.
Wisconsin
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We finally reached Wisconsin. We have been hustling as we want to be able to stop in Illinois to visit our cousins and need to get to Michigan in time for Sean’s birthday at the end of July. There is a lot to do in Wisconsin, and we decided to go to the Dells.
The Dells are pretty much like Pigeon Forge, TN. Lots of mini golf, go-karts and water slides. Due to some grumpy issues (not all of them were mine) we mainly stuck with the mini golf course and eating at a restaurant with a train theme. Hard to say which the kids liked best. The mini golf gave us a choice of challenging levels while the restaurant delivered the kids food and drinks on a model train.
Minnesota & The Mall
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Finally, we have reached Minnesota. Another state where I had to scrap plans on where I was going to take the kids. We decided that we would go to the Mall of America. 520 stores, 50 restaurants and an amusement park right in the middle of the mall. Sounds like paradise.
It mostly was. We did find the Lego store to be a bit disappointing. Its the same size as the store back home with the exception of the open air ceiling that allowed for some mega Lego builds to be on display.
The kids enjoyed the bumper cars and mini golf the most. I enjoyed the Maze of Mirrors. It did take us quite a bit of time to find our way out. I let Brian lead for a while. Then I told him to just keep going to the right and we would eventually find our way out. I think the kids were getting worried at the end. I know I was.
Badlands and Wall Drug
Posted onOriginally we were going to go and see the Crazy Horse Monument but decided to see the Badlands instead. It was an extremely hot day and none of us felt like hiking in so we took the majority of the pictures from the scenic view points. Our favorite picture is the one reminding us to watch for rattlesnakes. A sign we have been seeing since Texas.
After driving through the Badlands, we stopped at Wall Drug which is a rather huge tourist attraction.
Visiting Mt. Rushmore
Posted onAs y’all know, we have made it back to Virginia. I stopped posting at the end of our trip due to fatigue and just not having enough time to toss up a blog post and pictures. I will try to get the rest of the information up in the next week so everyone can see the pictures.
I purposely didn’t show the boys any of the pictures of Mt. Rushmore before we went to visit it. I didn’t want to alter how they would view it for the first time. Brian’s first comment was about how small it was. Even when we walked the presidential trail, he still felt it was smaller than it should be. He has seen pictures of it on TV and expected it to be huge as they all zoomed in on the monument. Even after showing him the sculptors studio where you can see that a worker could stand in a nostril, he still was a bit disappointed.
Sean was just happy to see the last item on his list of “must see items” for the summer. After some prodding he did say it was smaller than he thought it would be, but that he understood it would be bigger if he could stand by it.
The day was really hot so we cooled off with some presidential ice cream. Apparently the recipe is by Jefferson and you can purchase the recipe. We decided to just have a taste instead.
