Skip to main content

Jewel Cave, Badlands, and Missles!





 Jewel Cave- Is aptly named... it really is beautiful inside.  Again my photo skills can't capture the beauty.   
 We had a wonderful tour group and tour guide.  It was filled with kids- probably a third of the group was kids and they all enjoyed it and kept it funny for everyone. 

  There is another tour you can take to explore, but you have to be able to fit through this concrete block to go on the tour- the girls wouldn't have any problem!


The Badlands

Anyone that is into western novels or movies has to have heard of the Badlands.  When we realized that we were driving right past Badlands National Park, we had to revise our itenerary to include driving through it.  The layers of rock and sandstone and the formations that have been made- I just loved it.



 One thing I thought was so neat was how we would be driving and one one side of the road it was meadowland and flat and basically with not a lot of stuff, but then you look on the other side of the road and it's dropped off into these formations with so much movement within them.
 These small hills- used to be the larger mountains... simply put the badlands is a mountain range that has erroded away through many, many, many years. (I think I got that right?)

 I loved the formations, the striations of color... just beautiful!



. 

 Another add-on to our trip was the ballistic missle silo. We didn't plan far enough in advance to get to tour the command center, but we were able to visit a missle site

 Normally you wouldn't think of just driving up to a chain link fence in the middle of nowhere and walking in, but that's what we did!



Alex was bummed about missing the control center, but he enjoyed learning more about the silo and the missles.

From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump home to sleep in our own beds in our own rooms... we had a great trip, lots of sights, lots of walking, lots of together family time!  Can't wait till our next family trip! :)

Comments

Whitni said…
Wow! Love all of the pictures. It sounds like you and your family had a great vacation!
July 24, 2012 at 5:41 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rocky Mountains and Idaho

We left Rich's sister and brother and their families in Keystone and headed on to Julie's family reunion in Island Park Idaho. The drive was gorgeous. I can't get enough of the views as we drove through the mountains. I was surprised at the quality of pictures I was able to get through the windshield of the car while we were speeding along at 60+ mph!  (sorry for the wierd formatting of pictures... trying different options of hosting sites here! :)) Upon arrival at the cabin in Idaho we wasted no time and started the games and fun. Grandma (my mom) had some things she shouted out and everyone that fit in the group would go and sit by the fireplace for a group picture... "A" names, Born in Utah, Born east of the missisippi, etc... it ended with all the girls and all the guys taking group pictures. The next day we went on a gorgeous hike. The kids surprised us and just took off on the hike. We had to send Rich off to catch up with them instead of tagging bac...
Post a Comment
Read more

House projects

After a few weeks of Rich working from home, we decided that we needed to do some moving around of stuff in the house.  The exercise equipment needed to be taken out of the office, and we made the decision to dismantle Alex's room since it's downstairs and that would become the new exercise room.  His stuff got packed up, and the room was painted and the treadmill was put into that room (which was a feat of it's own!  It won't come out of that room until we move away, and maybe not even then! lol! The office got a coat of paint as well and two of the bathrooms.  Now the entire house (except for closets) has been painted since we had moved in 3 years before. But then the biggest house project was thought of, and debated and decided on.  We had always said that we would like to redo the kitchen in this house, and decided to tackle the project.  We found cabinets online we liked and worked with a company to decide on our cabinet layout, and we ordered them....
Post a Comment
Read more

Magical Magic Kingdom

We got to the park for the opening, and almost made it through to closing at 1am (we left about 12:30).  We did take a break in the afternoon to go check into our second hotel and settle in and grab a bite of dinner.   The magic kingdom is the magical park- fairy tales and wonder.    The seven dwarfs train ride- we went to first- and managed to get into the line fast enough to not have an hour + wait like everyone else later in the day had.   It's so fun now that the whole family can ride most of the rides together.    And the parade....   So much fantasy and I love the costumes- so much fun to see!  Angela was very happy with her souvenir of choice....it's hot this week!!    It's just my magical park- I love it lit up late at night.  :) 
1 comment
Read more