Summing It All Up

Now that we've been home for two weeks, I thought I'd poll the family for their reviews of our vacation...

What was your favorite national park/monument/historic site?

M: Yellowstone National Park, because of all of the wildlife

R: Arches National Park, for the rock formations and hiking

J: It's too hard to pick!

Me: Yellowstone National Park, awesome thermal features and wildlife

Signs

My collection of entrance signs, 20 National Park Service units visited in all...

June 19

What a Gas!

I thought it would be interesting to chronicle the price of gas across the country this summer...

Barn Sour

We woke up on the western edge of Minnesota, but the boys were determined to make it to Chicago TONIGHT! So, today was just "go, go, go"!

Before leaving Pipestone, we headed back to the monument visitor center so that the boys could get their Jr. Ranger badges (and I could get my picture of the sign!)

As for the Rest of South Dakota...

We spent the night at the Sunshine Inn, a small motel in Wall, SD. Normally I'd pick a chain place, but this one was half the rate and even still, had excellent reviews on TripAdvisor. I'd definitely agree with the other reviewers - the room was clean, the couple who own the motel were nice and gladly filled up our ice chest, and it was only a block away from Wall Drug! I'm also going to take some space here to give the TripAdvisor website two big thumbs up! It has been invaluable in choosing places to stay, as well as finding things to do -- not only for this trip, but also for others that we've taken. The forums are also a great place to get advice from local experts.

All done with the public service announcements, now back to our regularly scheduled programming...