Driving into the storm. Patty's house is up ahead.
Wyoming Visitors Center!
Mount Rushmore
Cosmo
This was us standing comfortably, to stand strait up and down was too hard with the gravitational pull. Weird Hu!
Packed Perfectly10:45am- Left the hotel to find some fun.
First stop was Bear Country. A two mile drive looking at bears for $16 per adult...NO THANK YOU! I'll just take my kids fishing this summer!
Second stop was Sitting Bulls Crystal Caverns. Looked pretty awesome but there were 184 steep stone steps going 10 stories strait down. With three little kids...NO THANK YOU AGAIN!
Third times the charm. Stopped at Cosmo. This will be hard to explain. It's this place in the Black Hills of SD where gravity has gone all wacko. It was really cool and so weird. The gravitational force gets really strong and distorts the normal gravity. Sloped planes are level here, you can stand on the walls, balls and water roll up hill, the trees all grow toward one place and you stand crooked. (you should look it up online.) It's like when you ride that ride at a fair that spins really fast and you feel really heave. If you have any idea what I'm talking about then you might know what I'm talking about. Anyway it was totally worth going to see/feel!
After Cosmo we went to Mount Rushmore. There's not much to say about this. It's heads carved into a big rock. It is pretty amazing though and I'm glad we stopped to see it.
Then lunch, Subway and Dairy Queen. The girls were already asleep so we got it to go.
2:00pm- Back on the road again heading to Laurel, MT to see Patty. Everyone is awake again after only sleep for about 30 min. Yikes this is going to be a long trip. We have 5 hours of driving ahead of us.
3:18pm- Wyoming Welcomes You! Girls are screaming...
3:23pm- Stopped at exit 199, Wyoming Visitors Center. As far as visitor centers go this was pretty cool. I never woulds have thought to stop at a visitors center normally, but we were desperate to stop to feed Emma. They had a covered wagon with dress-ups and a wooden horse with a real saddle for the kids to play with. The kids had so much fun. After the visitors center I drove for a while, Mary read the Magic Tree House books to Luke Hannah listened and played, Emma slept and Matthew read ESPN or some sports magazine. I drove for a couple hundred miles.
7:57pm- Driving into a storm, lightning and hail predicted.
8:43pm- Driving into a tornado!!!
10:00pm- Spent the last hour in Patty's basement hiding from the tornadoes that have touched down around us. One touched down in Laurel where we are but we never saw it. Mary was super freaked out and would not leave the basement and got mad at me when I did. I went outside at one point and the wind almost knocked me over.
10:15pm- The tornado watch is over, were watching Cash Cab in the basement and going to get hte kids ready for bed. The major part of the storm has past, although the lightning is still going strong. It's so amazing to watch.
2 comments:
For the last hour, I (Matthew) was driving from Hardin to Laurel. We were watching lightning the whole way. When we got to Laurel, the sky turned black and the clouds were forming the funnel (see pics). Iwas driving about 70 miles an hour down a frontage road (speed limit was not 70), saying the whole time, "Patty has a basement, Patty has a basement. We just have to beat the tornado to her house." That didn't really comfort Mary--or Diana, when we told her about it the next day. Some of the pics that Anastasia got of the storm are better than the ones taken by storm-chasers (aka "Evolutionarily-challenged homosapians").
Such unusual weather for this state! How odd that it just happened to occur upon your arrival! You can't say I didn't show you a "good" time...."scary" would be more like it! Hope your travels are progressing smoothly and that you are all well! Thank you for a GREAT time and visit!
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