We are in Cleveland right now. We decided to stay an extra day, just to relax since we had two very late nights in a row. We thought we could swim but unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. It has been cloudy, rainy and COLD the past few days. So, no swimming but we were able to get some fishing in. Somle pictures from our last few days...

Outside of Legoland Discovery Center(Chicago)

Building Lego vehicles

 Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower)

Sitting on the Skyledge 103 stories up

At Wrigley Field, waiting for the game to start (1 hour 20 min rain delay)

 And it starts!

Next night, next game...

 Progressive Field

Fireworks after the game

At Millenium Park by "the bean"

Getting in a little fishing

Ally with one of her catches

Andrew and one of his

Today we drove across South Dakota and stopped at a few unique places.  The first one was Wall Drug store.  Only, it isn't A store...it is several stores within a store that takes up a whole block.  For those of you who have been, it is similar to South of the Border but nicer.  It had some funny things, like a bit jackalope you could sit on and a stage coach you could pretend to drive (in the spirit of all the silly pictures, Andrew and Ally posed both places).  After Wall, we made it to the Corn Palace.  Every year, the outside is decorated with murals all based on some theme.  The murals are made out of corn, wheat and some grains.  Inside, there are pictures and murals from past years.  Of course, Rob purchased a huge bag of popcorn there! Our last stop was the most...let's say interesting.  I read an article about a sculpture park in Montrose, SD right off I-90.  Since we would be passing right by, we decided to stop.  We had a little trouble finding it (there were no signs and we turned the wrong way off the interstate).  So when we got there, it was about 8:30 pm.  The sign said open 7 am -8 pm but since it is entirely outside, I thought we should take a chance and head down the dusty, gravel road.  As we got closer, we could see a trailer and shed with a man and dog sitting out front.  Let me stop here and say at this point, the sun was beginning to set just slightly, but Rob was feeling more than slightly uneasy.  He got out to speak to the man, who was the sculptor.  He said we were welcome to come in.&

 Wall Drug

Andrew and a new friend at Wall

Corn Palace

This is the welcome you get entering the sculpture park

nbsp; He asked where we were from and after telling him, I told him that I had read an article about his place. He asked me what newspaper and a few other questions. Rob said he needed to use the bathroom and he replied, "I have a port a potty!" Rob said it was okay, the RV has one; to which he replied, "It's clean!" In reality, Rob wanted to go back and lock the RV. (still was feeling uneasy!) All of the sculptures are made out of metal, most left over junk, that he has welded into sculptures.  We were the only people there; no one else was remotely close by.  He showed us the path to walk through and let us pet his dog.  Many of his sculptures were a bit odd.  You started out by walking down Buzzard's Way, which ahd all vultures in various positons above our heads.  The biggest and most notable of all the peices is a 60 foot tall bull's head.  There also happened to be cattle grazing throughout the whole area.  As we started to walk, many of the cattle ignored us but several watched us and even began to come toward us.  Then one started running away.  It was a little odd.  Mixed with the odd nature of his sculptures and the fact that the sculptor put on his large welding gloves, everyone began to feel a weird feeling.  But the sculptures really were interesting. On the way out, we signed the visitor's book and Rob realized there had been several people all day.  But he still was ready to go.  As he said in the RV, he thought he put on the gloves to kidnap or take us hostage!! I said, "Lots of people come and he's had artucles written about him and his artwork." To which he replied, "A psycho can go off at any time, no telling." But once we were safely away, he did admit it was a cool place to stop.  (Also, the sculpor told me that normalyl there are no cattle roaming around; SD is in the middle of a drought and his neighbor needed some more grass for them to graze so he let them in. I really think if we got there when other people were there, or there were no cows eyeballing us or it the sun wasn't setting, we would have had a diffeent initial feeling.) I'm posting some pictures now, but if you want to see more of his work (we didn't take pictures of any  of the really odd ones, google Porter Sculpture Park.)

Ally by a pink dragon

One of the funny sculptures

Devil's Tower, Sturgis, and the Mt. Rushmore area

On the trail

Going down into Jewel Cave

 A donkey checking out the Rainbolt family

Crazy Horse

So, the past few days were really jammed packed.  After leaving Cody, we maed it to Devil's Tower.  We got there around 8 and we headed up but it started sprinkling.  We weren't sure if a storm was coming in or just a few drops but since it was a bit late anyway, we headed back to camp (turns out it wasn't much at all).  The next morning, we headed up and walked around.  At the bottom of the hill was a huge prairie dog town.  It was so close to the road and there were holes all over.  We really got to see them close up.  After a little while, we got back in the RV and drove to our campsite at Mount Rushmore. On thee way, we stopped in Sturgis. It was the beginning of the motorcycle Rally, so we got out to walk around. Andrew LOVED it. Many of the streets were closed and there were motorcycles parked everywhere. Andrew and Ally had Sturgis shirts on, so they fit in pretyy well with the crowd; I'd guess about 95% of the people were in some sort of HArley gear or some other sort of motorcycle wear. It was LOUD and CROWDED. But it was definitely interesting and pretty unique. As we left, we kept seeing bikes all around us on the road and when we got to our campsite, there were some bikers there too.   We had something to eat and decided to go to Mt. Rushmore that night.  We got there when it was still light but stayed until sunset.  They had a park ranger speak and then a short movie about it and then it was lit up.  It was very nice.  The next day was a very busy one.  After breakfast, we went horseback riding. Ally could not wait.  We were in a group and went out for about an hour and 20 minutes.  We saw some deer on the way.  Everyone did a great job with their horses.  Not surprisingly, Ally declared this her favorite thing of the trip and has been asking how you could have a horse on Staten Island! After riding the horses, we drove to Jewel Caves where we went down into the caves.  It was a ranger led hike so we got to see and learn a lot.  On our way back, we rode through Custer State Park where we saw donkeys and more buffalo.  The donkeys come right up to the car; one tried to stick his head in bur Rob rolled up the window before it could make it in! And the last stop on the day (yes, this is still the same day!) was to the Crazy Horse monument.  Although my view was not good last visit (ha, ha!!!) you can tell that they have made progress.  They have pictures showing the monument at different stages since it began over 50 years ago. We finally made it back to the campsite where before bed, some nighttime mini golf was played.  THEN, it was bedtime!!
                                                Devil's Tower

Prairie dogs

Andrew checking out bikes at Sturgis

Mount Rushmore during the day...

...and at night

So after Yellowstone, we headed off to Cody.  One of the many things they are known for is for being the Rodeo Capital of the World (or maybe they are not so well known because I bet most of you didn't know that!!)In the months of June, July and August, they have a rodeo every night.  It was mucg better than the one we saw last time in OKlahoma.  This was more like a show.  Andrew thought the rodeo clown was hysterical and they had a scoreboard showing results.  One thing that was the same is they had the calf scramble for kids.  This time, Andrew didn't want to go (he said he wasn't feeling well) but...Ally went into the arena and did it!! That's right, she is quite the rodeo gal! She didn't grab the calf but she sure looked fast out there and gave it a good try!
                                           There is the cowgirl, ready to go!

And she's running!

She got an official rodeo used lasso afterwards!

 The next day, we visited Old Trail Town and this was in the bukding used as a hideout by Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and the Hole in the Wall gang. (Andrew is doing his best to look kike he's ready to rob a bank!)

We found this place down the road a bit....yeah, some of you will be happy, others, not so much (you know who you are!)

More pictures from Yellowstone:

This is one of the hot sprinds.  It looks like it would be cold, but that's not ice and it's actually so hot, they have walkways built that you must stay on.

After one of the other geysers, the Beehive Geysers went off, there was a rainbow in the mist.

Just some of the many steaming spots in Yellowstone.

Pictures from Yellowstone...
         Old Faithful spouting out

One of the many buffalo we spotted daily

A herd of elks hanging out by one of the visitors centers; they came right by our car!

After we hiked down a very windy path to view the Lower Falls

We didn't see a grizzly (only a black bear) but we found the prints of one! And the ranger said they were from only a few hours earlier!

So, obviously, I can post pics again but it takes a really long time...so I am going to skip ahead and add some of the good ones and hopefully, from here on, things will be better!

Photos from Glacier:

Here are some pictures from Killbear Provincial Park in Canada

So I think I can get some photos up....I tried to post 2 from the treetop adventure. The first one shows Ally "tree hugging" and the second shows Andrew going from tree to tree.

Pics from Treetop trekking