While riding in Mike's tow truck, we crossed into a new time zone and gained an hour. The next morning we took advantage of that fact, had an early breakfast, and Bryce and I called a Lyft to take us to the Toyota dealership when it opened at 8 am. Sue and Aubree stayed in our hotel room to watch the younger kids.
Honestly, I had never been to a new car dealership before; we usually buy our cars through private sales. It helped that I had a very specific list of requirements and was willing to walk away if those requirements weren't met. The Toyota dealership had only one van that met the checklist demands. Taking Bryce turned out to be a stroke of brilliance. His knowledge of technology is vastly beyond my own (he reads Popular Science in his spare time and whenever he rides with other people pays careful attention to the details of their cars), and he asked really thoughtful, important questions and follow-up questions.
We quite liked the one Toyota option (a 2015 Sienna) but wanted to do our due diligence by visiting the Kia dealership as well. Just as we were about to call another Lyft, the Toyota car salesman offered to drive us over. We knew it worked to his advantage in his sales strategy, but it was still appreciated. We ended up not spending very long at the Kia dealership. We liked a few of their Sedonas, but they didn't meet all our requirements and were more expensive than the Sienna.
So, we called Mr. Toyota Salesman back, and he returned to pick us up. Before returning to the dealership, we drove over to the mechanics shop to get the registration from our old green van. While we were there, he suggested we go ahead and swap all our stuff from the old van to the new. That ended up being a much bigger task than I'd anticipated; it took us nearly an hour to get everything switched over.
When we finally finished that project, we returned to the dealership to fill out piles of paperwork. Mr. Car Salesman was worried about payment since we were from out of state, but the financial guy had no problem taking a personal check. Phew! It was a crazy morning, but we managed to find and buy a new van, get everything switched from the old van, and still make it back in time to pick Sue and the kids up from the hotel just before their noon check-out!
Aubree suggested we call our new van Ruby, and the other kids voiced their whole-hearted agreement. Welcome to the family, Ruby!
Since it was only noon, we had a lot of options about how to spend the afternoon. Despite my dislike for back-tracking, we decided to put Ruby straight to work and visit some of the places we missed Friday, including Badlands and Wall Drug. Graham and Thane were extra excited that they got to earn their Jr Ranger badge at Badlands.
We spent most of our time in Badlands driving a loop through the formations; it reminded us of a mini-Bryce Canyon. We did stop to hike the Fossil Exhibit Trail, which is super short and extra fun for kids because they can crawl up and around on the rocks.
Aubree and Nellie weren't quite as interested in scaling the rocks, but they liked looking for fossils.
We saw some of our favorite parts of the Park on our way out - a sneaky fox and prairie dog towns. The prairie dogs are fascinating to watch!
We tried to go to the visitor's center for Grasslands National Park, but we arrived 4 minutes after they closed. Whoops! Instead, we made our way over to Wall Drug, the most advertised tourist trap I've ever seen. Aubree and Bryce counted nearly 100 different billboards touting different features of the store. When we arrived, it wasn't what I'd expected. I imagined a giant, open, one-room warehouse. Instead, it was an over-priced souvenir mall full of small stores selling different wares. We weren't too impressed.
On our way out of Wall, we stopped for dinner at Dairy Queen (again). The DQ ice-cream cones were a much better deal than the ice-cream at Wall Drug!
After dinner, we drove back through Rapid City (a much more pleasant drive this time around) to our hotel room in the tiny town of Rockerville. I can't believe how much we managed to fit in to that day! We paid for it with a rough time getting everyone to bed. It didn't help that some of the kids (Thane most notably) had come down with colds and were snotty.
Sunday morning we were back to our original schedule/plans. We made it to church in the Mt. Rushmore ward at 9 am.
It was a surprisingly large and robust ward. While we waited for Sacrament Meeting to start, the ward Young Women's president saw Aubree and came over to talk to us. We told her we were visiting from Seattle, and she said, "Seattle? I have a friend who lives near Seattle."
"Well," I replied, "Seattle is a big area and there are a lot of church members."
She continued, "Do you know the Smiths...?"
I thought to myself, "Smith is the most common of all names," but then she finished her sentence, "Kelly Smith?"
Shocking myself, I started to cry. She looked a little shocked by my reaction.
"Kelly is my neighbor and dear friend! She lives 4 doors down!"
Then we were both in tears. I suppose I was a little more homesick than I realized. Turns out, Kelly and Carolyn were super good friends when they both lived in Sioux City. Meeting Carolyn was a tender mercy for me - a reminder from God that he is aware of us and knew what we needed, and that there are wonderful people everywhere.
After church we changed our clothes, had sandwiches in the car, and drove up to Mt. Rushmore. After getting our Jr Ranger booklets, we started to make our way towards the mountain and crossed paths with the Sister Missionaries who had been at church with us that morning. Apparently they are at Mt. Rushmore pretty much every single day.
Everyone had warned us that Mt. Rushmore was smaller than you'd expect. Ironically, because of that constant warning, we felt it was bigger than we expected.
Seeing the carvings was impressive, but then we listened to a Ranger Talk about the process, and it made everything ten times more impressive. We had a chance to chat with this particular ranger for a while before his presentation. He's a young college kid, just an intern this summer. I asked him what made him want to be a Ranger, and he mentioned two big road trips his family took when he was in 8th and 9th grade. On those trips, they visited a variety of National Parks, and it ignited in him a love for the nature and history.
It made me think about the long-term effects our road trip might have on our kids. I don't necessarily expect any of them to likewise choose a career as a Park Ranger, but who knows what place, or museum, or person, or experience might influence their future choices?
We took a reluctant Nellie on a hike up hundreds of stairs to the base of the mountain. The kids weren't sure getting closer was worth climbing all the stairs, but it was neat to see just how much granite was blasted.
They were rewarded for their efforts with another Jr. Ranger badge.
We left Mt. Rushmore and began our drive to Gillette, Wyoming where we were staying for the night. Along our route, however, I discovered another National Park - Jewel Cave. We decided to stop, but unfortunately arrived late enough in the day that most of the tour cave tickets had already been sold. The only remaining tour didn't start until 4:40 pm, which would have gotten us to Wyoming too late for little children. We completed the Jr Ranger booklets, took an outside hike, and looked around the visitor's center, but sadly didn't get to go down into the caves.
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