The Dakotas: Great vacation
Annie Deighnaugh
6 years ago
Fair warning...lots of pics. Thanks to all who helped with making our vacation work so well. Most appreciated!
What a wonderful vacation with some very incredible scenery. Landed in Bismarck and went to Ft Abe Lincoln then out to Medora to see the Teddy Roosevelt National Park, both units and the Medora Musical which was a lot of fun.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Then we went to SD to Spearfish Canyon which was really gorgeous.
Went to Deadwood which was a zoo with a big concert going on and an antique car show and auction. Then we went to Custer State Park via Needles Highway which was just incredible.
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Annie Deighnaugh
6 years agoFrom Custer we went to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse which was so interesting.
Then we drove the wildlife loop to get down to Wind Cave which is full of "boxwork" a calcite formation that is most unusual.
Along the way we saw so many creatures: bison, big horn sheep, prong horn, badger, prairie dogs, deer, bunnies, turkey, burros and more. Then we went to Hot Springs to see the Mammoth Site where they are in the process of uncovering the largest collection of mammoth fossils in the world.
Then we went to the Badlands with a stop at Wall Drug which was a lot of fun, before leaving from Rapid City to head home. We packed a lot into one week and are delighted we went. We highly recommend it for those who like scenery, animals and national parks.
Annie Deighnaugh
6 years agoIt was also my first time on the prairie and I can see how people can fall in love with it. We drove past miles and miles of hay bales and hundreds of acres of sunflowers in bloom. Pretty spectacular.
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Your great vacation
Comments (15)Absolutely, Larry! Day trips, stay-cations, are perfectly wonderful. We spent heavily on 'the big' vacation last summer, though the memories are cherished. For this year, we've reserved a site for camping 3 different weekends, 2 in May, one in July, which will cost about 1/6 of the big trip last year - for all 3 of these camping trips. If your state parks have camping, it should be very reasonable. State parks in FL (where we like to go, we're less than 20 miles from the border) charge $24 for most camp sites. There's no restaurants to tempt us with $25+ plates, which we always go for when out in a hotel. It's just us, the beach, and whatever we bring with us. We did finally go to Raleigh last weekend. Romantic notions of taking pictures of quirky roadside attractions quickly vanished. Holy cow I'd forgotten how crowded it is in that part of the country. The 'scenic route' we tried between Charlotte and Raleigh was totally bogus, and full of traffic lights and big rig trucks, no more pleasant or bucolic than I-85. Loved visiting the people, but driving around Raleigh is not something I had any interest in until/unless we got hungry and wanted to go to a museum. Life's way too short to spend it sitting at traffic lights like those. I spent more time at those lights last weekend than I have in the whole past year living here. That's one thing we love so much about New Orleans (and camping, for that matter.) Park the car when we get there, then it doesn't move again until it's time to go home. What are folks' plans for this year?...See MoreFargo North Dakota gardeners??
Comments (4)Of the ones you list (potentilla, lambs ears, daylily, iris, chives, lady's mantle, coral bells, ivy, pachysandra, hosta, trillium, forsythia, hydrangea, sedums, phlox, clematis), only the following might be questionable, or need some special consideration: - ivy, pachysandra, trillium, forsythia, hydrangea, clematis The trillium likely needs woodland conditions, so you may have to create that setting in your new location, depending on your situation. For the shrubs, it would be useful to look up the particular species and cultivar to help judge hardiness...same for the clematis. The other perennials you list are generally very hardy types, and should likely be hardy there....See MoreHome from Vacation, now I am ready to have a vacation:)
Comments (8)(The following is a message from DH the computer nerd about those that are having trouble with the video on the website) For those that are having trouble loading or watching the video, first let the whole video download before pushing the play button. The second is that you might need the newest version of quicktime. Thank you for all the comments. We left again this morning at 8:20 to go and watch my nephew play baseball an hour away. We then met my mom and 2 of my sisters and 2 nephews at the park and had chicken at the park and let the kids play.The also brought my baby Hayden back to me. My sis had his hair cut ( it was in his eyes and I gave her the okay) he looks like a big boy now. Of course today and tonight he wouldn't let me out if his sight, I sure missed my little baby ( not so little at 25 pounds at 11 months) Rhiannon declared yesterday that she couldn't be 5 until she had a birthday cake. So my mom made an angel food cake and brought it down so Rhiannon could turn 5:) Growing up my grandma always made us an angel food cake for our birthdays. We have continued the tradition with my mom and my kids and nephews. Stacie who went all day today again and still needs to do laundry...See MoreBack from my first road trip vacation & vacation preferences
Comments (24)It took me a while to find this, and I had to do some odd searches to finally find it! Anyway, I did want to respond... IdaClaire - yes, I am somewhat of a compulsive story-teller, and when I was in First Grade, I won first place in the UL story-telling contest. I had to look up David Sedaris, but he does sound inspirational. I've always wanted to write in the style of James Thurber, which I think is somewhat similar. Anyway, I have to thank for this comment because it has gotten me back on the short story collection I was working on. I had started to write my autobiography, not because I think my life is special, but several friends have asked me to do this, including Dolores Deluxe, who is an actress and also an author. I met her in San Francisco in 1974 when I was living in a theatrical commune where she was rehearsing a play that some of my roommates at the time were in. Our commune was in a storefront on Valencia street that had been a dance studio before, and so it had one cavernous room with 8' high mirrors and ballet bars. I recently saw Dolores again at one of her book signings, and then we had lunch near her bungalow in Venice on the beach. I have her autobiography and thought that I should try to write something similar, but that really didn't work for me, but when I read your post, I got the idea that all I need to do is get a collection of short anecdotes - something that would be much easier for me to do. I've decided that they do not need to be sequential, and I can try to make sense or order out of them after I've finished writing them. BTW, when I was at Rice, I took Larry McMurtry's creative writing class and got an A in it. I was told that some of my writings were Kafkaesque, which I did agree with, but those were especially the ones I wrote in high school and college. They tended to be a bit surreal. 3katz4me, you would have to fly your cats to Palm Springs, which is Cathedral City adjacent. I just had my pool resurfaced, and it has new equipment as well, and the heater works well, although I certainly don't need that in the summer. In September the water temperature was 85° without using the heater. I'm going there this week-end to do some more work on the house....See MoreAnnie Deighnaugh
6 years agoSome animal pics. This first picture will be the cover of our photo album. The horses, the prairie dogs, the badlands...embodies so much of what we saw.
Annie Deighnaugh
6 years agoAnnie Deighnaugh
6 years agoAnd we saw lots of bison. Got stuck in a few bison jams. Had a delish tenderloin of bison too!
Annie Deighnaugh
6 years agoAnnie Deighnaugh
6 years agoSpearfish canyon was pretty spectacular. We were in awe at so much of the scenery, but the needles highway was probably the biggest surprise.
Some looked like the Easter Islanders were there...
jim_1 (Zone 5B)
6 years agoAnnie Deighnaugh
6 years agoAnnie Deighnaugh
6 years ago
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