South Dakota

Well yet again, a delayed blog posting. Sorry about that. It's been busy though.

We traveled last weekend to South Dakota....they say it's the "hot" spot to be, so we ventured on a not-so-scenic drive to see the lovely state. I should also mention we were visiting my Cousin Rita, Jeremy's Parents and an Aunt and Uncle. So, I guess there was more to the trip than just to see some faces carved in a mountain. (ha ha)

We departed on Thursday to allow us a day with Rita and a day with Jeremy's family before driving back on Sunday. Again, it was a fast trip for us but really it turned out quite nice!

Friday we toured the Wild Horse Sanctuary outside Hot Springs, SD. Since Rita volunteers there we had a great tour guide and really learned the in/outs of the Sanctuary. I'm attaching a few photos from the Sanctuary. Also we went to the Mammoth Site; it was discovered in 1974 by a housing developer and was then turned over to the state. It's quite interesting to see the true remains from 27,0000 years ago. If you tour in July you can actually watch the digging take place live. Pretty cool. There's a photo attached of that as well.

To Rita's request we left the 3 dogs with her for 2 nights while we went to Mt. Rushmore to visit Jeremy's parents, Aunt Jan and Uncle John. I still am shocked Rita dared to watch 3 crazy dogs with 4 horses on her land. However, Sadie found that 5 acres was plenty to run on and she managed to sniff a little to close a Cactus (that was fun). Elvis, he loved chasing the Rabbits and hunting on the land. Dibs......well Dibs isn't the sharpest tool on the block so he went up to the horses and barked....dumb dog. I'm shocked he didn't get stepped on for going too close.

Continuing on, so we headed to Keystone, SD which is close to Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse. we met Jeremy's parents there as well as John and Jan. Within 5 minutes of their arrival we had a bottle of wine open because we were all "thirsty?" After visiting and breaking our FIRST wine glass we hit dinner and then called it a night. Saturday we visited all the monuments and then headed to Deadwood thinking a "great deserted ghost town." Little did we know the town has no problem with their population......they are officially a gambling town. So we visited a casino for a bit and then headed back to our hotel. As you can imagine we were quite "thirsty" after another day of traveling so we opened another bottle of wine. After the SECOND wine glass of the trip broke we headed to dinner. (Thank heavens the wine glasses were the hotels) Anyway, we had a great time and it was a complete fluke the wine glasses broke; it was completely unrelated to the amount of consumption, but it was rather hilarious the second time around.

Sunday we headed back to Rita's to get the dogs who were exhausted. You'd never know they were running 5 acres the entire time.

Aside from that, I started my new job with University of Denver this past week and it's going well thus far. It will definitely be challenging but that's a good thing. I'm headed to DC this week so I'll update you after that.

We are in the process of our home "renovation" due to water damage. Although the roof was "fixed" a week ago we had water inside again on Thursday night........that was fun. So, Friday the contractors were back to try again. Sounds like Tuesday the interior work will begin. We'll update you with photos here.

Today we went to a Denver Broncos Football game. It was fun and also exhausting knowing tomorrows a work day.

Until next time.....think dry thoughts for us...we've had enough water damage this year. ha ha