Pictures and More Pictures.

We have thousands of pictures for our vacation. I took about 800 pictures, my daughter took about 2000 and dearest hubby took about 3000.

I will post some of the best of these to give you an idea of some of the scenery we saw.

This post has more pictures of the Calgary Stampede.

Yes, my son has his nose stuck in his iPod.

Enjoy.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Now that we are home, we looked back on our vacation to see what worked and what didn't work. Here are the results:

Good: Rival Hot Pot Express. This little electric pot enabled us to heat up water in our hotel room. We could make oatmeal, cup-a-soup, hot chocolate, hot tea, or even coffee if needed.

Good: The car roof top carrier. This basket type carrier enabled us to pack all the luggage on top of the car, leaving the inside for the food box, cooler, electronics, and other items used during the car ride. I especially liked that the luggage did not rest directly on the roof of my car. The carrier was connected to the crossbars, which kept the weight of the luggage distributed to the frame of the car, not on the roof. See pic of my car all packed and ready to go. We had four suitcases up on top.

Good: My car. The Honda CR-V ran like a champ. My gas mileage was not all great because of the weight in the car, but I still averaged about 23 mpg.

Good: Air mattress. Since we had five people and most hotel room only sleep four, we brought an inflatable air mattress for the fifth person to sleep on. The mattress inflated with portable air pump and less than three minutes. In the morning, the mattress rolled up small enough to hide in a suitcase. We never had a problem with it leaking air and it was used every night.

Good: Food box and cooler. We were able to keep our food costs down by buying grocery store food, like deli meats & cheese, bread, hot rotisserie chickens, potato salad, etc.

Good: Power strips. We took two power strips to use at the hotels. Hotels are notorious for having too few electrical outlets in hard to access areas. The power strips allowed us to recharge our electronic gear without having to swap plugs in the middle of the night.

Bad: Cramming three people in the back seat of my car. We had five people in the car, which meant three had to be in the back. We would "shoe horn" in. It was tight. But we all switched seats and rotated so the same people (children) were not always in the back seat. Equal opportunity to be crammed...

Bad: Five people in one hotel room. Many rooms are not very big and five people living in one room can get ugly (Hmm... should this be under "ugly"?) But we all lived through it.

Bad: Internet. Internet availability was spotty at best. At our chalet in Banff, we could not get internet in our room and had to go to the hotel lobby. Even then, the internet connection was from the hotel across the street. We had three hotel rooms (out of seven) with WiFi in our rooms.

The ugly: The pace of the trip was grueling. We should have planned more relaxing time, but once we got all the way out west, it seemed a waste to spend a day doing nothing. So, we need a vacation from the vacation. . . lol. . .

It's Corny

On our long drive home, we stopped in Mitchell, SD, at the Corn Palace.

It was different. . .

They were still decorating it.

Enjoy the pictures.

Wall Drug

Go

I don't care what other people have said, but you really should go see Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota.

I am impressed that a small business man can transform his store from "corner drug store" to tourist attraction and still be appealing.

I found the whole enterprise kitshy, fun, and entertaining. . . and, yes, I had free ice water and hubby got 5 cent coffee.

We bought souvenirs and spent money at this slice of rural/cowboy Americana establishment. And had fun. . . did I mention fun?

It was goofy, but cool.

The store is more like a department store with many different building copped together. Each department has a different focus, like western hats, or candy, or children's toys, or the cafe, or the kids play area, or even. . . (gotta love american ingenuity) a place to pan for gold.

Enjoy the photos.

The Badlands

The Badlands were nothing less than spectacular. . . ! Absolutely breathtaking! I took a gazillion pictures. Here are a few, but pictures just don't do justice to the beauty of this landscape.

Big Step Watch Your Head

We took a tour of Jewel Cave that was . . . interesting. It was the Historic Lantern Tour. . . which meant that we got to see the cave as the early cave explorers saw it, with lanterns for light. Each person in the group carried a kerone lantern. That was the only light in the cave. There were no overhead electric lights. We could only see by these lanterns.

We then proceeded into the cavern and squeezed into tight passages, stooped through low ceilings, climbed steep stairs and slithered down dusty rocks. The group was great with a lot of communication between the people. The family in front of us would tell us to watch your head and there is a big step. We would hold our lanterns up for each other so you could see where to step.

My boys loved it. I was disappointed that we did not see the pretty formations that Jewel Cave is famous for.

The Grand Tetons, Devil's Tower, and Mount Rushmore

WOW. . . . !

What else could I say?

Just look at the pictures.

The Tetons are as majestic as rumored. We drove to the top of Signal Mountain for some of these pictures, which had a cell tower on the top.

Devil's Tower is as bizarre as rumored. . . weird and awesome. . .

Mount Rushmore was just cool. . . I have always wanted to go to Mount Rushmore. One of these pictures was taken from Iron Mountain Road, from within a tunnel. The tunnels were built so the people emerging from the tunnel had a view of Mount Rushmore. Is that cool or what?