Our Drive to Utah

So my pictures uploaded out of order, so this isn't chronologically correct, but you'll get the idea.
In May we went out to Utah to visit my family who all came into town for my youngest brother's highschool graduation. The drive is long, especially with kids, so we took some stops along the way to break up the drive and make it a little more fun.

Our first night on the road we stopped to sleep in Custer, South Dakota. Custer is a fun town right out side of Rapid City. It's close to MT Rushmore and has many attractions. One of our favorites is Bed Rock City, aka Flintstone Land.

For dinner the first night we stopped in Mitchell, South Dakota home to the worlds only Corn Palace. The sign and pillars in the picture below is made entirely from ears of corn and cornhusks.

Kendal struggled with the hours in the car. He hasn't quite become the road tripping pro that Kizzy has become in her short years. He struggled and fought it, but thankfully he did sleep....some.

Kizzy kept herself entertained easily. She watched cartoons, read books, colored and napped.

One thing that helped Kendal was, he snacked almost constantly. And, since we were on vacation, he ate more junk and sweets than normal, including his first sucker. He was one happy boy!

On our first day on the road we stopped in Jeffers, MN.

Kendal loved our first stop. He loves being out side and he loves the wind, and it was a very very windy day.

I took a lot of pictures of the petroglyphs, but this is the only one that showed up. It was really cool to walk amoung the ancient native american carvings.

"Little House" fans like me will appreciate this picture. Jeffers, MN is about 20 miles from Walnut Grove, MN which is where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived during the years of "On the Banks of Plum Creek" The site that Jeffers Petroglyphs is on is a protected Prairieland that is one of the only protected prairies in the US and is exactly the same as it was hundreds of years ago. It struck me looking at the landscape, that this is what Laura was looking at when she was a child. The picture of course does not capture the scope of the landscape.

And last but not least, to help our Potty Trainee, we brought her potty seat with us in the car, so when she needed to go, we pulled over on the side of the road so she could go. We'd empty the potty on the side of the road (biodegradable, right?) and we would be on our way. It worked great for a girl who notoriously waits until the very last second to go.

More to come, our time in UT spent with friends and family, including Newman Family pictures.