Mt. Rushmore and Jewell Cave

The Internet is not available from our camp site this time, so I had to make the walk to the front office to the game/book area to write tonight. Yesterday, Sunday, was a good day. Finding a church in South Dakota is not like finding one in Utah, on every other corner, so we had to skip church. We did our best to make it a calmer day and rested a bit. Well you know me, I rested more than the rest since we drove a bit. Good thing I trust my driver. I make sure he has his directions and away we go. We started our morning by going to Mt. Rushmore. It was an amazing place. We walked part of the trails and read lots of history. We watched a few video clips about the area and just stood and looked at the mountain. It is amazing to see how they made the men and the equipment and work that went into constructing it. I am glad they listened to their math teacher because there is some serious geometry in that monument. : ) The kids all liked it and even told me some stories about George Washington that I did not know! It was a good morning walk.
That afternoon we had made some reservations to walk through Jewell Cave. It is about 20 minutes from us and is the second longest cave in the world. It was a real neat cave. It was actually quite different from the Meramac Caves we visited in Missouri last year. Now that I understand caves a bit they are different because of the moisture. Missouri is much wetter than South Dakota. It was a fun experience though. One of the funny parts about the cave is the discovery of it. Two brothers were riding their horses by it and they saw the a hole in the mountain. The older brother attached a rope to the younger one and dropped him in. He went in quite a ways then he pulled him back out. Just a funny thought though as I thought about Bryce making Britton go into the cave to see if it was okay for him to go in. The National Parks have a program where the kids can become a Junior Ranger. I decided to let them do the program at this cave. They had to do some writing and reading and then answer some questions by the Park Rangers. They are now official Junior Rangers. They really liked the cave and learning about it.