Day 9 - Sunday 7/22

Everything good must come to an end….we have to load up and continue our journey. Today we need to say goodbye to the Gordy crew. We are not saying goodbye for long to the girls (Caitlyn, Carlie and Olivia) because in just 9 days….they are flying to New York for a ten day visit….we are so excited!!! As you can see from the photo above Max, Olivia's dog, came with the Gordy's. He is a great dog and we have enjoyed having him here but we have all become concerned that he had not let any trains come out since he left Colorado on Thursday...we are betting the 8 hour ride home could become disastrous...will keep you posted on how THAT turns out!! The forecast today calls for 107 degrees…..good thing we are moving on, I am not sure the air conditioner could keep up with that!! We started our day at Crazy Horse. It is a work in progress and ultimately will be a three dimensional, in the round stone sculpture (carved out of a mountain) of Crazy Horse on his horse. It will not be completed for at least another 30 years. It is an amazing structure with an equally amazing story. After that we went to Rapid City, so Andrew could pick up a copy of the new Harry Potter. While we were there Alex spotted a Sonic…we decided we could break our no fast food rule and had lunch. Now we are going to my land…..Nebraska. (Aksarben as Alex calls it) After looking over the map I realized we had not seen the “Badlands”, how can we be here without driving through? So we take the scenic route through South Dakota instead of the Interstate. I seriously do not think it was more than ½ of an inch…unfortunately there are no hills on maps…they should make them more 3-D for people like me. Due to the scenic route we are not going to arrive in North Platte to see one of my childhood homes until 8:30 pm and we will still have another 2 hours before we reach our destination for the night. Seeing the Badlands was really amazing. In some areas it really looked like the moon. The rest of our drive through South Dakota and Nebraska was pretty much non-eventful except...

(Jane you might want to stop reading here…this information is only for the turtle and bear crowd)

We are started to sense there may be something going terribly wrong with the sewage system....the smell of methane has permeated the living space and our eyes are tearing. Shari set off a minor explosion while trying to reheat mac and cheese. Thank goodness for fire extinguishers...All is well except that Shari no longer has eyebrows or eyelashes…

JUST KIDDING (thanks Steve)

I did not recognize much in North Platte, other than when we pulled onto my old street, I recognized my house. They have added on to it and taken down the cherry tree I hung out in and the walnut tree from the back that I hated picking up all the nuts from. We also had an empty lot next to us that we played baseball in and there is now a house there. I also showed the boys my elementary school. That sums up our stop in North Platte…woo–hoo! Back on the road to our overnight in Grand Island, NE…that I can tell you is either grand or an island for that matter!! Andrew has not put his Harry Potter book down and is now on page 533…he will finish by tomorrow. All in all it was well worth the 13 hour travel day.

On a side note, we would love to throw a big Happy Birthday out to our friend, Andrew D, in Yorktown - Hope you had a great day!