Travelodge Keystone

We are back safe and sound from our trip to Arequipa and the Colca Canyon. I wanted to tell you what a wonderful travel agency were Inka Fest Travel. They were PERFECT! They took very good care of us - especially after I got sick while hiking out of the canyon! That was a rough day for me. The rest of the trip was great! They are really nice people, too...

Thanks for everything, it was a great trip!

... and had some of the strawberry wine that I brought, with roasted marshmallows and Hershey kisses.

Sunday

Slept in some after all that wine the night before :) Made another delicious meal. This one was eggs cooked in a zip-lock baggie; thanks to Billy finding out about this. So easy and tasty and no clean-up! Added the vegetables to them and cheese and made them into omelette's. Had the leftover potatoes and coffee ...

... escaped with little more than a good scare.

Because the rain would not stop and since tomorrow we plan to ride a shorter day to Kingsport, TN to visit with Lori we stopped at about 4:00. This gave us time to get some laundry done and have a nice dinner for the first time in days. Despite that, we hit a lot of states including New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. We had hoped to have ...

... just to do the head. We then continued onto Mount Rushmore, and stopped for photos on the balcony overlooking the mountain, before going into the musum to learn about how and why it was made.

We are now heading onto Yellowstone National Park.

"Now somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota, there lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon…"

That song played in my head the whole time we were in the Black Hills and is back now that I am writing about it (they call this phenomenon an “ear worm” – I call it annoying!!).

Well, we didn't see a “showdown in the local saloon” (see – can’t get rid of it!), but we saw great ...

... beautiful. We spent four days in a small town called Keystone, which is pretty much in the heart of the Black Hills. From there we took day trips to see Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, the Badlands and Deadwood, which is an old western town with a lot of history.

... presidents. On the way out we pass by the very attractive restaurant. Unfortunately it had closed at 8:00 pm, rather silly as I am sure we and others would have enjoyed dinner there with the spectacular view of the illuminated presidents as a backdrop. We return to Keystone, which is an unattractive town built entirely for the tourist ...

Sunday 8 June This morning we had a leisurely time having breakfast etc partly due to the heat and partly because we didn't have to go anywhere! Terry offered to take us for another drive in the car up to a few look out points around Morgantown. We didn't leave until about 11am so we only had a couple of hours sightseeing time before we had to be back for a family party. The first place we went to was on the other side of the valley from where we were staying ...

... The cycle back did us in as it was a long steep uphill grind back and the temp was around 100 F. We had burgers for dinner and a Lego building competition, the kids got to watch some TV too which was a novel experience. We had a restful and refreshing day and the Aircon cooled sleep was bliss.

... order when it was admitted to the Union, and it's flag on top of the pillar. So, all of the fifty states were represented with all the flags in the air. Mt. Rushmore was really neat to see. Looked way better than Stone Mountain's carving. We took pictures and went into the information center to learn more about it. It took 14 years from 1927 to 1941 and took 360 men to sculpt it. There were zero ...