Our Summer Vacation, part 1

As I posted earlier, we had an awesome vacation a couple weeks ago!  We started out on the morning of Wednesday, July 11 and headed west to Dickinson, ND.  Some friends of ours, Becky and "Cordy" (as Abby called him) graciously allowed us to crash at their house that night.  In addition, "Cordy", who works as a firefighter in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, took us on a little tour through the park.  (Not the entire park, as that would have taken a lot more time than we had available this time.  We will probably have to take another trip out to Medora and the park another year.)  The kids were excited to see their first wild buffalo, as well as some wild horses.  (There is a bison ranch that we pass frequently on our way to run errands, etc, and of course they have seen and been around horses before, but seeing them in the wild was different and very exciting!)

I have been to Medora/part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park/the badlands before, but it really is a pretty area.  

This last picture was the first of several family pictures that we captured on our trip.  It almost looks like we were photoshopped over a background of the badlands, but I promise we were really there. :)

Day two of our trip took us from North Dakota into Montana.  It was fun to watch the landscape change one again from the badlands to rolling hills mixed with HUGE wheat fields, along with open prairies with herds of cattle and horses grazing.  The kids were also excited to see their first long-horn cattle, something we don't really have around here.  Our main focus that day was a stop at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  We listened to a presentation and watched the film they had about the battle, and checked out the exhibits in the visitor center before heading out to see the battlefield area.  

This is a picture of part of the cemetery where U.S. soldiers are buried.

These are pictures of the U.S. Soldiers monument on top of Last Stand Hill.  I apologize to the random people in the picture for unauthorized use of your picture on my blog.  This picture was taken from the car as we drove past.  (I would have loved to get out and take a closer look and get a better picture, but we had tired kids, we were running out of time and it was BLAZING hot.  Consequently, we chose to just drive around instead of getting out and hiking around.)

This is a picture of the Native American monument.  

It really was interesting and I wish we had more time to really explore.  Maybe on another trip, when the kiddos are a little older and better able to do more walking/hiking, and perhaps when the temperature is a little farther from 100.  We spent that evening in Billings, MT, taking some time to relax in the pool after supper.  The kids needed a chance to burn off some steam after a lot of time in the car those first 2 days.  I think, in an effort to keep this post from becoming horribly long (especially with all the pictures that we have), I will end this post here and continue our journey in another post.