By the seat of our pants.

**totally not sure why these pictures look pixelated...anyone know?  they look great on my computer but not when I upload them, I'm doing the exact same thing with them as usual...hmmm....**

We knew we were going to see Mount Rushmore. That was the plan. The Badlands…not in the plan. Staying at Mount Rushmore for most of the day…not in the plan. Getting out of Gillette around 11:30am…not in the plan.

So today pretty much 95% of our day did not go according to plan. We were mostly just spontaneous about the whole day. Once we realized the plan was pretty well shot we just kept doing whatever we wanted. We ate in Keystone at the DQ after being in awe over Mount Rushmore.

If you haven’t been to Mount Rushmore it will amaze you. When we saw it I was completely taken with the enormity of the project, how people carved those faces, and who it was that came up with and executed the idea. I couldn’t figure out how they knew where to start carving and creating in that mountainside. Curiosity got the better of us and we had to go to the artist’s studio that was almost 250 stairs away. We had heard that there was a presentation at 3:30 but knew that we wouldn’t be around by the time that happened; we just wanted to see the space. Well…we looked around and asked questions and looked at books about the artist and Mount Rushmore…until the presentation at 3:30. We still hadn’t eaten any lunch and we stayed.

Miriam got to be the helper when the park ranger talked about how they decided to start the carving. Ninety five percent of the work was done with dynamite. The other 5% was all carving and chiseling and jack hammering. The workers were suspended from the top over the face of the mountain. The amazing thing was that not one of the people that worked on the sculpture was killed. It was very inspiring to hear how the artist came up with the idea and the bravery and skill of the 400 people who worked on the project.

After getting on the road we were about to pass the Badlands…and at the last second we took the road out to the National Park. The Badlands are amazing…all of these places are! On one side the land is just rolling along and then out of nowhere and for seemingly no reason all of these hills and valleys and canyons are just there. There is grass just waving in the wind (that’s beautiful, too…the way the grass blows like it’s waves in the ocean…I love it.) and then there are these crazy Badlands. Mike and Emmett freaked all of us girls out by walking out on this precipice with a drop on three sides. I couldn’t watch. I had to walk away while Miriam yelled for them to come back. (I remember first realizing I was afraid of heights when I was pregnant with Emmett. Mike went out on this ledge at the Grand Canyon. I remember telling him, “Don’t you make me a widow with this baby on the way! Get away from that edge right now. You are totally freaking me out!”….is that a mom thing….to start worrying like that?)

The Badlands were freezing with that wind blowing. It’s the middle of July and Gracie was wrapped up in a blanket!

**The picture of Gracie laughing is because she couldn’t stop laughing after I totally biffed it on a stair and fell all over the place but kept my camera up in the air to make sure that it didn’t get hurt. I got hurt and I’ve got a couple of bruises on my bahookie (Emma’s word) to prove it. I couldn’t stop laughing either. I’m terrible about laughing when I fall or anyone else falls. It just keeps replaying in my head and it makes me laugh every time I think about it. Falling is so funny. Once I walked into a window at the college I was going to and shattered the whole thing (that’s a story for another time) …I still laugh every time I think about it.

Anyway. It was a great day of unplanned stuff.

spontaneous. LIFE.