SD Vacation...

It would take nearly a day to tell all of what Dorena, Lauretta and I did during the 4-day Bison, SD vacation, so I will tell you about the highlights and share some of the pictures we took.

Getting ready.....

We left Lauretta's house a little after 4:00 on Friday afternoon and drove for a little more than 4 hours, arriving at Dorena's grandmas' house a little after 7:00PM---their time.  :)  Dorena had a wonderful supper of chili, chips and cornbread waiting for us.  We got settled in, played some music (Lauretta on the piano and Dorena and I on violin), then headed for bed, and talked a lot....  

Dorena now has a cello, so we had fun trying to play it...

The following day, after eating a yummy breakfast and saying goodbye to Dorena's sister-in-law, Katie and her son, Christopher, and her sister, Christina, who were going to Iowa to take Christina back home again and to visit,  we headed out for a day of wood cutting and hauling....

Whenever we drove places, it amazed me how many little churches we saw out in the country...

We loaded this horse-trailer about 2/3rds full of wood and filled a pickup box also.  Here Dorena is playing "Catch" with her little niece, Lydia, while Lucille and Amos watch...

These are Luke and Amber's little ones---who filled our day with stories and laughs!

Luke and Justus (2 of Dorena's brothers) did most of the cutting, although Lauretta ran a chainsaw for a while too...

Lauretta, on the prairie...

Lucille (4) and Amos (3) got free rides over to the next wood-cutting spot...

It was a beautiful day to be outside!

Lauretta, Dorena, and Mara (Dorena's youngest sister), talking about????

Dorena and Justy, down the hill...

They hooked a chain onto a fallen tree and then pulled it up the hill with a pickup...

Lucille thought it was fun to play "Drum"...

Lauretta and I, babysitting.  :)   Lucille wanted to all the kinds of animals we've ever had and all of my family's names (first, middle, and last), plus so much more.  She was funny!  By the end of the day, little Lydia (16 months) could say the word "Cold" or rather, "Code".  I doubt she was actually cold all bundled up in the big person coat, but we all laughed when she said it, so she kept on saying it!

Then, Dorena joined us in the trailer (on the tree stumps) for a picture that Mara snapped...

Almost full.....

Lucille snapped this one of her papa...

That night, we girls watched "The Christmas Choir"---a story of a man who helped a group of homeless gentleman by working with them and forming a choir.  :) 

The next day, Sunday, we went to 2 church services.  First, we took Dorena's grandma and great aunt, Esther (whom she takes care of there in her grandma's house) to their church in Bison and sat with them.  Then, we took them back home; Dorena helped her brother, Ethan get a cow in the right fence; and we headed for Prairie City to go to a church there which is pastored by a home-schooling father of 10.  We really enjoyed that church...  

Later, when we got home again, Lauretta wasn't feeling the best, so she just rested while the rest of us ate lunch and then Dorena and I set about the task of finding some paint that was "Just the right color" and repainting a portion of the kitchen...   We took down the 40-year old chicken wallpaper and painted over the green paint that was below (after thoroughly washing it, of course!). 

Dorena...  :)

We listened to good music and had some great talking time....

:)  Dorena and I have been friends for about 14 years already....  We've been through a lot together!

Awwwwwww.....   Dorena plans to put a Bible verse up there sometime and stencil some flowers on it too.  We asked her to send a picture when she gets it done!

That night, the 3 of us drove to Dorena's parents' ranch and enjoyed a fun evening of visiting around the wood-stove (which is where all that wood that we cut went to...), and eating popcorn, apples, and pumpkin cake while watching "Hot Lead and Cold Feet".  :)  Dorena's dad took this picture of we girls----Mara, Dorena, myself, Lauretta, and Katey.  (Mara and Katey are both Dorena's sisters).

Somewhere in all of this, in the evenings, we'd help Dorena catch the naught chickens that didn't go into the coop on their own accord and carry them over to their rightful place, shutting the door to keep out all critters of the night....

This picture was taken Monday morning.  It is of "Grammy" doing the dishes.  She was so sweet and rarely let us do the dishes (we did do the cooking though), as she wanted to do something to help too.  :)

Lauretta played some more hymns....

AND THEN, Dorena took us on the adventure of the year----Butte climbing, which is similar to mountain climbing, I think.   The Buttes are just a few miles West of her grandma's place...

Getting ready to climb.........

.........the first butte of the day, "Old Baldie". 

At the bottom of Baldie...

My Dorena and yours truly....

Lauretta, holding the lead-rope we'd brought along in case we needed to help each other up and down the rocks.  I used it a couple of times, as I do believe I was the least brave/daring of the 3 of us.  :)

It was so rugged up there, and beautiful at the same time!

The red, white and blue lady...  :)

Up, up, and away.......

I got about 2/3rds of the way up (above the tree tops, as you can see) and then decided to wait there while the others went up to the very top.

Here they are coming back, wondering the best way to get down to where I was waiting for them....  Down is a harder feat to accomplish than going up is!

While I waited for the explorers to return, I added my name to the hundreds all around me (and a flower for good measure)....   I also called my mom, as I had excellent reception right in that spot!

When Lauretta returned to where I was waiting, she also carved her initials in the rocks (along with the year), but Dorena did not, as her initials were out there somewhere already....

This was the easy stretch...

I was amazed at how many trees there were out there!  

 Dorena, going on a lone-adventure...

 ....from which she took this picture of Lauretta and I....

 Isn't that lovely?

 Lauretta, peeking out from the rocks...

 There was a little shelf on one of the rocks, so I sat on it.  :)

 After successfully climbing and coming down from "Baldie", Dorena showed us "The Eagle's Nest" next...

 Basically, you climb up and up and up, then go through this little hold in the rocks where you can sit on a little ledge and look over and the valley below.  We sat there for quite some time, throwing little pebbles down into the valley....

 We returned then to Dorena's car and ate our lunch on top of it.  Here is the park sign:

Dorena then drove us across the highway and back on a very curvy trail a ways until we were in the general area of some caves Dorena wanted to show us.   Hiking was easier in this area, as it was basically just walking on relatively flat ground, pushing tree branches out of your way as you went....

 We walked out to the edge of that part of the territory----and stopped.  (I was standing on another rock that jutted out further than the others so I could get this picture of my friends....)

 THEN, Dorena found the cave she was thinking of....and went down inside of it....

 Do you see her?

 We were waiting for her to try to come back up, when we heard laughter behind us!   She'd come out behind us in the "Secret passageway".  :)

 Lauretta and I decided to enter the cave via the not-so-secret-anymore passageway...

The entrance was very narrow (you had to walk sideways to get inside), but then it got a bit wider inside....

 That small hole above is where Dorena first entered the cave and made her decent....

 We went in search of another cave that Dorena knew of, but never found it (she thinks it might have caved in).   We did find other interesting spots though...

 Beauty...

 Dorena said she'd take us to the end of the trail then so we could see the rest of the buttes.   On the way, we saw the one and only living thing that we came across during our whole trip (outside of some people while we were eating our lunch)-----a young porcupine!     Dorena and Lauretta went pretty close to him, Lauretta armed with the camera, but this little fella was camera-shy.  He wasn't in too much of a hurry either.  He'd just start walking along and then, when a person got in his way, he'd turn slightly and keep going along his merry way.  :)

 We never tried climbing this hill (it was pretty far away), but it was quite interesting to look at!

 We had to watch out for the cactus plants scattered here and there on the hills...

 We came to the end of our vehicle-journey at this point.   We thought we may be done climbing too, but then decided to go on one last adventure....    Do you see the 3 points of those hills in the center of the picture?  Well, we decided to climb every one of them, making it to the top of the very last one (the left one here).   SO, we started walking from where I was standing while taking this photo----and were we ever tired by the time we got back to where I was standing here!   It was so much fun though!

"I go to the hills when my heart is lonely...... 

To laugh like a brook as it trips and falls over stones on its way.......

To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray...."

 Sitting on top of one of the rock points...

 "Whatever you do, do NOT go over that edge!!!"

 Dorena and Lauretta got to be pretty good friends by the time this was over!  :)

 She just wanted to see how far down it was to the ground at that point....

 Lauretta---our fearless leader....

 What a comfy place to take a nap, don't you think?

 Here you can see better the hill to which we made it to.  It's the tallest one in this picture, with all the green bushy/mossy stuff climbing up this side of it....  It doesn't look like it would be so difficult to climb, but it really was a challenge.  This picture makes that mountain look on the small side, as it was taken from another mountain!

 When we FINALLY made it up to the toppest of the top, we built a little stone tower-----to see if we could see it from far away so we'd know where we had truly been....  It was amazing to me that anything could even grow on those rocks!

 This had to have been the most fun part of the day!   We decided to descend the mountain and go around the bottom, then climb up the closest butte to where we had the car parked---instead of reclimbing every butte along the way as we did on our way to the tallest of the tall hills.   A little ways down from the top of the butte (you may want to go back 2 pictures and see) there were these bushy things growing.  They were about a foot thick.   It was Lauretta who started it all.  She pulled up her skirt around her knees, then sat down and started SLIDING!    She was laughing so much that Dorena sat down too and zoomed right by her!   I was way behind, as I stopped for some pictures....   It was SO much fun, even if my skirt was made of a velvety fabric and kept of grabbing the vines instead of sliding very well over them.  It would almost have been worth it to reclimb the mountain to be able to slide down again!

Here is a picture of that mountain/butte again from a distance, showing how far the bushes took us down the side of the giant hill!

 OH, and can you see our rock-tower up on top?  :)    We found a deer trail towards the bottom of the butte and followed that, wondering why we had not noticed it before?  It took us almost all the way back to where we came from.

 And here, we were back up on solid/safe ground.   It started sprinkling and turned colder, so it was a good thing we did our climbing when we did!
 Dorena looks like she's thinking "Oh my, I can't believe we did that!", but in all reality, she is talking on the phone here, telling her grandma we were alright and would be home soon.  :)

 When we got back to Dorena's room.....................     It felt so good to just relax!   We actually did stay up late that night though, talking some more; eating banana splits; and watching "Fireproof" and then "The Christmas Card".  :)

 We had to say our goodbyes the following morning after a hearty breakfast of french toast and yogurt.   We did sing some hymns together first and repacked the car together.   It was so sad saying goodbye, but we hope to make it back there next year again instead of letting 2 years slip by like I did last time.....

I drove Lauretta and I to Lemmon where we filled the car with gas, then we stopped at the Petrified Wood Park and walked around there for a while....

 This "Tree" was very tall (that's Lauretta standing beside it)....

 They'd built a museum out of pet. wood and this round room with an archway...

 Standing under the rock arch...

 This piece of pet. wood had some shiny stuff in it...

 This rock was neat as it was so perfectly shaped as a seat....

 Me and the petrified log.....  :)

 AND-----the last picture of this post is of Lauretta, sitting on one of the rock chairs by the rock table......

 

It was a little chilly out, so instead of eating our lunch (that Dorena had packed for us) by that table, we ate it in my car.    Lauretta then called up one of her cousins and asked if we could drop in and visit him and his family, as they were right on our way (and he said "Yes").  SO, after making a short stop at a small grocery store to buy some breath mints (as our sandwiches had onions in them....), we visited Lauretta's cousins for a while before continuing our journey home.  I was very pleased with my car for making the whole trip on just about 1 tank of gas.  :) 

 

I returned Lauretta to her home, then returned myself to my own home, where my mom had a  good supper waiting. 

 

It was such a wonderful vacation!   

I thank God that everything worked out so we could go (although we missed having my friend Miranda along this time!) and that we were kept safe, AND, thank you to all of those who did my work while I was gone (my family even moved the cows home without me)!