Road Trip!

Tuesday afternoon we loaded the car and made it to Butte, MT to stay with Jessica & Arlis for the night.  Our next stops were Rapid City, SD to see Mt. Rushmore, Minneapolis, MN to see The Mall of America, and then on to Houghton, MI where we will be this summer. (Houghton is pronounced "Ho-tin", but people around here don't really pronounce the 't' that loudly).  The last three hours of the three day trip were spent driving back roads to get to the Upper Peninsula.  We didn't have 3G reception on Joseph's phone, so we were grateful we had picked up a road atlas before we left Rexburg.

Some highlights of the trip included
-paying $2.94/gal of gas in South Dakota
- stopping at Urgent Care in Bozeman, MT for Meghan's stomach virus
-FINALLY getting to see Mt. Rushmore
-loosing some plastic parts of our bumper on I-90
-Lego Land at the Mall of America
-driving through snow storms in May


Joseph and I both decided the trip wasn't as long and boring as we thought it would be.  Maybe we were remembering the road trip days of our youth when we were squished in the back seat, forced to sit next to siblings who drove us crazy and stole all our leg room.

We made sure there was room in the car for baby boy Withers so he would fit on the drive back to Idaho at the end of the summer!











































Just about every street corner in Rapid City, SD   had a statue of a US President.  Here I am with Andrew Jackson.

Joseph and William Howard Taft.

Waiting with Martin Van Buren at the crosswalk.



























Joseph and I have both never seen Mt. Rushmore.  We were thrilled to finally be here.  It was a cold morning.  We were in the gift shop getting a Christmas ornament for our family collection for a few minutes and when we stepped out, it was snowing!

Eh, it's just plastic from under the bumper...the car still runs great!

We only had about an hour and a half at The Mall of America.  I told Joseph I probably would have spent money if we stayed any longer, so maybe it was a good thing we were just there passing through as tourists!