Home again, home again...

Another nice family vacation in the books. We did a tour with the idea of following the Lewis and Clark trail up into MT. It was fun, stopped off in Roosevelt National Park, South in North Dakota. WOW.  First let me say that it was really cool to be so close to the wildlife that they would just walk through the

camp sites if they pleased.

  

Yup, those are wild horses strolling through the camp.

Never thought there were still wild horses in America. Anyway is was a good time the kids learned to appreciate a sunset. 

They fell in love with prairie dogs and were excited to see them every time we past a town. We hiked out to see the petrified forest in the area. Let me tell ya...hiking all that way to see some stumps was not what I was expecting. Not that it wasn't interesting, I thought the trees would be all rock but I found a piece that was part wood and part rock. But well... just look...

The petrified stumps of ND.

Another view of the forest.

 I got into a stand off with a young bison on a trail in the park, he won. Had to turn around and hope he wouldn't follow me (booger was blocking the trail, and suddenly was more interested in me than eating). Still it was a nice run and logged some time in ND. One night I was woken up by Bri because she swore somebody was going through or camp and looking in our coolers. Nope, just a big male bison grazing through, one of those moments were you want to take a picture but aren't sure how he'll take the flash. Alas, I was chicken with only a thin layer of nylon between us I decided not to risk it. Medora was nice but it is a typical tourist town complete with a show every night. We did some geocaching but a few of the ones there  were so ...annoying that we just stopped. I enjoyed my time there and would recommend it but don't see myself rushing back anytime soon. However, right as we were leaving we noticed a herd moving through the other end of the campground and had to go take some pics.

We headed into MT stopping along the way to tour some old forts, the kids once again enjoyed themselves even after crossing into MT and ND about 4 times each or so.  Really proud because you would think they would just complain the whole way and during the tours but they really got into it. We crossed into MT going through a couple of reservations and made a stop at Auntie's house for a few days and some more geocaching then it was off to central MT. Made some new friends and saw some family and had a generally good time. Headed home we stopped at Jewel cave National Monument (I recommend) and Wind cave (not so much) then headed south to tour through Oglala reservation and Pine Ridge and look at Wounded Knee. Talk about depressing. I have seen poor in three different countries other than here and I am really sad to see it like that here in America too. I feel fortunate to have not come from a reservation. Wounded Knee was ....I dunno not what I expected. 

After all that and hunting down our stamp from the Badlands, SD for our National Park Passport we turned southeast and headed home. We were going to stop in a National Forest in NE, but everyone thought it was creepy, no cell service, nobody knew we were there, and we were the only people in the park. It was straight outta a "B" horror movie. So we started driving again and finally decided to pull another all nighter home. We arrived at 6 something in the morning and we all hit the rack for some catch up sleep. Speaking of... night all. TTYL