Would you like to hear about it?
Couldn't you just pretend you'd like to hear about it?
Reginald Kitty is not amused.
Last Thursday, when the opportunity arose for us to take a small side-trip through Nebraska, we decided it was worth our while. The catch, of course, was that we would be on super-dee-duper, top secret official business that required taking some kids home. No one minded, so we ended up going.
Glazing over the ten out of thirteen hours that one of the children had a mental breakdown, we had a smashing time!
Highlights included :
*Dropping the weeping child, et al, off. That gave us two days to play!
*One of the kids asking me what year I was born, and the nano-second it took me to realize that they may not understand what the abbreviation "'91" meant, so I had to say "1991", instead. Either that, or when I told my mother how cheap Dairy Queen had gotten by putting the free kiddy ice cream treat coupons on the paper kiddy meal bags. When I was little, they gave out hard paper tokens, which happened to be a concept these kids didn't understand. Thank heavens I decided against comparing the old tokens to Pogs.
Look, kids! I'm too young to feel this old!
*A side trip to our favorite park in Lamar, CO.
*Driving through the panhandle of Nebraska. I'd never been there before, and it was just lovely (which was thoroughly unexpected).
*Going to South Dakota; I'd never been there before, either. As a little girl, I had an erroneous idea that the Dakotas were a far way off. They aren't. Small personal milestone: this trip tipped my "states visited" count to thirty-one! Nineteen more to go (watch out, New England! I may get to Vermont and never come home).
*We went to Mount Rushmore! It was an amazing experience, which I hadn't really expected. During the homeschooling years with computer-based curriculum, of the several lay-outs I had to chose from, I always picked the Mount Rushmore/patriotic one. From sixth grade through high school, I would log into my work every day to the Star Spangled Banner. (Yeah, I was always this weird.) To see it in person turned out to be quite a big deal, actually.
I took these myself, and I'm very pleased with them. It was the first time I had used my polarized filter and sun
visor combined, so to see how well the combo turned out is quite encouraging.
*While there, we drove into Keystone, where we took a chairlift ride up to a hilltop overlooking the monument,
had lunch, and rode on a sled track back down. That was just as fun as seeing Rushmore, really; even
Daddy went down the slide!
*We also drove through Wind Cave National Park, and Custer State Park,
which were surprisingly beautiful. Daddy kept singing "Home On The Range", but all I kept
thinking of was this clip...
I don't know why.
*And then, and then... we drove through a very nice chunk of upper Wyoming, sped past Pepsi Center in Denver
(so many good memories!), only to end up in Colorado Springs!
We went to our favorite Borders (sadness ensued) and got some great sales ("Juliet, Naked", in hardback,
for three bucks, thanks very much).
Also, there was this.
Overall, it was a lovely little side trip; though we're all glad to be back home.
Would you like to see some holiday slides (oh God, I inadvertently
called them holiday slides. I wonder about myself, sometimes)?
Tough. It's my blog, and I can.
Overall, I think it was worth the crying kid to have an unexpected mini-vacation.
