South Dakota,I don't love you......in March.

We had a nice two weeks in Colorado.  Hung out in Golden for a few days, stayed at Cherry Creek SP a few nights and the rest of the time we stayed with friends, Rich and Dechay.

Golden, CO

School work with Maggie

Our time there was spent getting car work done, visiting friends, working, schooling, and checking out lots and lots of different potential towns to live in.  Also, we went up to Winter Park to stay in Rich's family's cabin.  What a great place and we all went skiing while we were there.  Really fun weekend.

We took off from Colorado and headed north and east to Mt. Rushmore.  Stayed in Custer, SD and drove into the monument.  It was a very cool thing to see in person.

Out in the middle of nowhere and since it was "off-season" it felt even more isolated.  We later learned after speaking to one Native American that there is some tension among the Natives about the Mt. Rushmore carving.  He told us that those mountains are very sacred to his people and the idea of Europeans coming in and blowing up the rock to carve a statue is not very appreciated.  The natives are now blowing up their own mountain to carve Crazy Horse into it.  We saw it from a distance.

Crazy Horse Profile

Headed east towards the Badlands NP.  We heard that snow was coming, but didn't really think about it until we woke up the next morning to a blanket of white on everything.

Beautiful but not particularly nice to drive in.  We spent some time in the park, but the weather was terrible.  COLD and crazy wind.  The kind of wind we had in the dessert that feels like it's pushing you down :)

We had a long drive through South Dakota and down following the Missouri River.  Kansas City and east towards St. Louis.  We spend a day in Kansas City while Diego met up with some co-workers.  While we were in St. Louis we visited friends of ours, Kyle and Lori.  Had a great visit with them.  Stayed at Babler Memoiral State park our first night in the St. Louis area.  Beautiful park.  We got lucky that a worker let us in the gate after quiet hours.  Next day we saw a little bit of St. Louis.  The area around the arch was under construction, but we saw it from a distance.  Watch the "National Park" film at the OmniMax theater inside the science museum.  Great to see so many places we had visited this past year up on the big screen.

Forest Park playing frisbee

Elephant Rocks State Park

Kyle and Lori invited us to stay with them so we headed to their town......Farmington, MO.  Great time hanging out.  Spent Easter there, did some rock scrambling out at Elephant Rocks State Park, and saw the underground lead mine in Bonne Terre, MO.

Bonne Terre Mines

We headed on to Nashville, TN.