Squires Family road Trip 2010 Day 8

Today was another rest day on our Road Trip. We hung out with family all day. We did go to a couple of places close by Rochester. We went to a place called Lark Toys. These are where almost all of these photos were taken. We then crossed over the Mississippi into Wisconsin and went to a place and ate icecream and bought fresh cheese. When we got back from our trip, the adults went out to dinner. After dinner we played games all night. Today was a lot of relaxed fun! Tomorrow we get up in the morning and head up to Chicago.

Riding the carosel at Lark Toys.

Trying on crazy hats.

Hats continued.

Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 7

Today was a very relaxing easy going day. We only traveled 130 miles round trip! We went up to Mall of America with Tammy's brother John. This mall is massive and has an amusement park inside it. We were able to get passes from John's work at a discount. So we spent the day riding rides and then looking around the mall.

Nathaniel was able to join us after his field trip and ride the rides with the kids.

This pink thing took a picture with the kids as we were leaving. We had a great day and I believe the kids really enjoyed it. After we got back to Rochester we ate dinner and joined John's family with their yearly tradition of burning their homework on the last day of school and roasting marshmellows. This trip so far has been great!!!!!!!

Squires Family Road Trip 2010 Day 6

Today we went down to Mount Rushmore. I must admit I was very excited to go to this monument. Since I was little I have always wanted to go see Mount Rushmore. This monument did not disappoint me at all. It was kind of shocking when we got close, because it just appeared out of nowhere. This was a very educational stop for all of us. It was amazing to learn how they built this monument and about the President's that were carved into the mountain. After about an hour of walking around we decided that it was time to get going on our long journey to Rochester, Minnesota.

Knowing that we had over 600 miles to travel today and it being a second day of long travel we planned to stop several times throughout the day. Our first stop was at a place called Wall Drug. It is a huge store in Wall, SD. they had several different types of stores hooked together. We went in for a few minutes and walked around. It was a good pit stop and was fun, especially getting our pictures taken in the photo booth.

After Wall we took a little detour through the Badlands of South Dakota. I would almost compare it to Bryce National Park, because of it's formations. It had huge spires coming out of the ground with different layers of rocks in them. You can kind of see them in the picture below. We drove through the park in about an hour and stopped at the visitor center right before exiting the park. We rushed through the Visitor Center (basically just getting our stamp) because the road construction was letting our side go right then. Matter of fact a believe I almost backed into a car because I was in such a hurry.

The picture below show a brief stop we had, so the kids could say that they have been in the Missouri River. The boys found a dead snake and I believe it freaked the girls out a little bit.

Our next big pit stop was in a town called Mitchell. As you can see below it is home to the world's only corn palace. It was actually kind of neat how they made the artwork from corn cobs and husks. Those pictures in the background are made from corn that is grown in the local area. They change how the building looks every year. Inside they have pictures of all of the previous years up on the wall. They have been doing this since the early 1900's. We took some goofy pictures as you can see and we also ate dinner here. Corn on the cob if you couldn't guess.

Me and the kids being silly! Imagine that.

After travelling across the entire state of South Dakota we finally crossed into Minnesota. It was probably around ten o'clock at night. There was construction right by the sign so we had to park at the rest area next to the area and hike over a hill to get to the state sign. It was quite the adventure because of the muddy trail. I must give our kids major props because it was late and we had been out and about for around 12 hours, but they woke right up and ran over to get their picture taken.

I am not sure what time it was but I would say it was close to midnight when we made our last pit stop of the trip. We had to stop and see the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, Minnesota. This was probably the most hilarious stop of the trip so far. I had to wake everyone up in the car. That may explain all of the craziness during this stop, I couldn't stop laughing.

We finally arrived in Rochester, MN around 1:30 am. It was a very long day but it was also a very fun day. We traveled over 1,200 miles in two days! It was crazy however very memorable. We will now relax with family for the next two days.

Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 5

Today we started our day by packing up in West Yellowstone and heading over to Old Faithful. Before we left town we decided to stop at McDonald's and order from the Breakfast Dollar Menu. This turned out to be impossible being that they didn't have one. Those Sausage burritos that are normally a dollar were $2.39 at this McDonald's! We decided to go find a grocery store and take our chances there.
When we arrived at Old Faithful we had about an hour before the estimated time that it was supposed to go off again. It was bad timing but we decided to make the best of it and we went and watched two informational DVDs on Yellowstone. This turned out to be very educational for both the kids and us. I learned several things from the park that I didn't know before the DVD. After these two videos we went out to watch Old Faithful. We sat for a few minutes and then it started to go off. We had a great view of the geyser.After we were done watching the geyser that morning we decided we better get going on our 600 mile journey for the day. As you can expect we did not make too many stops, however we still had fun and did take in some very beautiful sites. Above you can see a picture of a valley taken from the top of Big Horn Mountain. It was a very scenic drive and I highly recommend it to anyone. When we came out of those mountains we soon came upon Cody, Wyoming. As you can see from the picture below they have a huge rodeo stadium. The picture below shows a National Monument called Devil's Tower. This was one of our few planned stops for this leg of the trip and was well worth it. We almost didn't go to this one because it was about an hour out of the way, but we were all very glad we did go. It is an amazing site. This pictures doesn't show the massive size of this structure because it doesn't show the top. However I think you can still get an idea of what it looks like.

After we left Devil's Tower we kept on going east. After going clear across the state of Wyoming today we passed into South Dakota as you can see in the picture above. It was really dark when we took this picture and the sign being reflective didn't help matters. I hope that explains the poor quality of the picture.Around 10:30pm we finally reached our destination for the day. We stayed with Uncle Dennis and Aunt Lurlene in Rapid City, South Dakota where they are serving on a LDS misson. It was a lot of fun staying the night with them. When we arrived Aunt Lurlene asked the kids if they were hungry and made them snacks. Uncle Dennis kept tormenting the kids by throwing blankets over them. It was a good stop.

Day 4 of Squires Family Road Trip

Today we spent the entire day in Yellowstone National Park. We made the big or grand loop. The kids have never been to the park so they were in awe the whole time.
We first went to the West Thumb Basin. We saw mud pots, and some hot springs. As we made our Jayden, Shaelyn and I made the loop around the whole thing we were stopped by a ranger and told to turn around. There was an elk that wouldn't let anyone go through a section of the path. This meant that we needed to back the way we came. We then stopped at the falls. We walked down to the upper falls and took some pictures. We also went to the Tower Falls. All of these falls are beautiful. We were a little dissapointed when we walked down the massive trail to Tower falls and was unable to view the fall from the bottom due to erosion of the trail. It was good excersise though. Our next great sighting was on our travels after Tower Falls. We came upon a traffic jam in the park. As we moved through the jam we noticed a black bear and two cubs. We had been trying to see a bear for three days (scavenger hunt). We were all so excited to see them. It made our day!
After we made it through the bear sighting we worked our way through the park. We stopped at some bull elk on the side of the road. Me and the boys were able to get pretty close to these big bulls.

We stopped at Mammoth Springs and walked around for awhile. By this time we were tired. After Mammoth Springs we traveled on to our stopping spot for the night. We stayed at a KOA in West Yellowstone which is located in Montana. This meant we were able to get another picture of the kids with a state sign.

(This next section was done by the three kids)

The kids enjoyed the indoor pool and us old folks enjoyed the hot tub. We ate KFC that night for dinner. In the KOA we got ready to go to bed. Our neighbor's were with the Denver Zoo. And thats what we did that day. There somthing else oh it is DS rock and this spencer. well it was fun.We didn't play or ds the whole day it was cool we saw alot of things when you read this you should thank jj because of him we could see all that stuff of corse me and spencer argued about it this is shaelyn.

Day 3 of Squires Road Trip 2010

Today we woke up to more rain, but it wasn't coming down really hard. We packed all our things up and headed up to Moose Junction to meet our river guide. We had to wait a little bit because we arrived early. As soon as they arrived we loaded up into the van and headed up to the unloading zone. On our raft we had one couple with us, so it was kind of like a private tour. It was raining the whole trip but it was just a drizzle, so it didn't ruin the trip. We saw five Bald Eagles, a moose, and all kinds of other birds. Too many to list. The Snake river is running really high right now so the flow is pretty fast. You could hear the rocks rolling down the river. At one point on our 10 mile 2 hour trip our guide could not avoid our raft going close to a tree in the middle of the river, so Shaelyn and I were knocked into the raft by a tree. It was awesome! All of the wildlife and scenery that we saw made it an awesome river trip.

After the river trip we went over to the Visitor Center and looked around. The kids enjoyed this place a lot. They went around and identified all the animals you can see in the park. They also were allowed to pick up sheds from some of the animals, of course they put them on their heads and acted like the animals. We then went and drove around the park. Below you will see a picture of us at Jenny Lake we ate lunch by here. The clouds up against the mountain and on top of the lake made it very pretty.

After we went and checked into our tent cabin we went for another ride to see if we could find more wildlife. We were very successful. We saw a ton of Elk with some very big racks. We also saw another Moose. At the end of our drive we went to a spot our river guide told us about. At this spot we saw two beaver dams and two beaver lodges. Just when we thought that we were not going to be able to see the animal that we went to see, we got lucky on our walk back up to get a glimpse of a beaver. He was so fast though we were unable to take a picture of him.

On our adventure I was a little evil. As we were traveling down one of the side roads we were crossing paths will a very small vehicle right by a huge puddle, so I romped on the gas and hit the puddle with some pretty good force and made the water go over the vehicle. Lucky for me they did not turn around and chew me out. Everyone in my Explorer thought it was very entertaining and funny.

Below is a picture I should have posted on Day 2.

Day 2 of Squires Road Trip 2010

We left Orem this morning and headed up to Tremonton to go eat brunch with Margo and David. We had a good meal and great conversation with them at Denny's. After about an hour of visiting and eating we decided to get on the road and head up to Grand Teton National Park.

During our drive we worked on our road trip scavenger hunt. Tammy made the kids a big activity book to work on while we are on our trip. They seem to enjoy working on the activities a lot. We also stopped and took a lot of pictures today.

On our way to Gross Vendre Campground we stopped at Idaho falls and drove by the Temple and looked at the falls for a little bit. The falls were awesome and was a very scenic stop. We also stopped at a scenic look out above the Snake River before we reached Jackson, WY. When we reached our camping site it was raining pretty heavily, so we hurried and put the tent up and got everything inside. We then realized we didn't have a lighter to start the stove to cook dinner so we decided to go into town to eat. While we were there we decided to go watch Prince of Persia instead of going back to camp in the rain. We arrived back to camp around 11:30pm and went to bed in the rain. We stayed pretty dry for as bad as it was out there.

Above is Tammy and the kids at Idaho Falls. Below is all of us at the Snake River overlook.