Last stop: Mount Rushmore

On our way back home from Yellowstone we stopped off in the Black Hills and saw Mount Rushmore.

There was a trail that went up a little closer and had some information about each president.  It was pretty interesting.  They also had some information about the sculptors and the workers. Gutzon Borglum and his son were the artists behind it.  Gutzon died just a few months before Mount Rushmore was finished.  They used a lot of dynamite.

This concludes our trip out west.  We had a really good time!  Even though there was a lot of driving it seemed to go by pretty fast.  We're already talking about wanting to go out again someday and maybe take more time and see other things too! 

last day in yellowstone and a few other stops

This was our last day in Yellowstone and it was a little cold and rainy.  Since we had seen most of all the major things to see we decided to just drive and walk around.  We saw a few more geysers/hot springs at

Geyser Basin...

we thought about walking all the way across, but it was windy and cold by the water.

ha! oops!

we decided that we didn't have many pictures of the both of us so we set up the camera and used the timer a few times...

of course we had to take a picture by the sign on our way out

.......................

driving through Shoshone National Park just outside of Yellowstone

we kept thinking of old westerns with Indians hiding in the hills

We came up on Buffalo Bill Dam and decided to take a peek

^^ just another random stop to take some pictures^^

I made Jeremy pull over so i could take a picture of these purple flowers.

I kept seeing them along the side of the road and off in the distance with yellow wildflowers.

^^ road side Iris ^^

Last stop: Mount Rushmore



Old Faithful, Geysers, hot springs and a hike

When we got to Old Faithful we weren't sure what time it was going to be going off, we just knew it was every 90 minutes or so.  So we put on our sunscreen and bug spray and started walking around.  We walked up and saw Old Faithful going off just towards the end.  We thought it was just going to be that one thing and we missed it and was going to have to wait.  Turns out there are hundreds of hot springs and geysers all around the area so we walked around.

I was really in to the buffalo's!

This one here was one of my favorites. 

After we walked around a couple hours we started to get cold and hungry.  We got some lunch and noticed that Old Faithful was going to go off in about 5-15 minutes.  We rushed over and got to see it go off.

This was at biscuit basin

After walking around we noticed there was a trail going to a waterfall.

buffalo herd

stopped a couple times on the way to Mammoth Springs

I think Mammoth Springs has had it's hay day.  Like back in the 70's (jeremy said more like 2000 years ago).  It was mostly dried up and nothing but white rock.  It reminded us a little bit of Meramec Caverns here in Missouri. 

Next up:  Geyser Basin, a few last stops around Yellowstone, Shoshone and Buffalo Bill Dam.