Sunday July 17th Down to Hot Springs, SD and the Mammoth Site

We menfolk slept in while Bette and Judy did laundry, and about noontime, we headed back down highway 79 to Hartland and picked up our adopted grandkids, and families, and we all headed down to Hot Springs, SD, about 50 miles down the road to visit the Mammoth Site.  Seems there was a big sinkhole here, and as the site was being developed for a housing development, the sharp-eyed excavator sensed he had found something important, and the result is this big building that encloses the pit, and so far they have found the bones of some 99 mammoths.  Did a nice half hour tour, Bette got a glow in the dark t shirt, and I got a pin, and was gifted a pin.....

We all ate lunch at a subway, which was jammed, then we came back to Hart Ranch, and bought the kids along for a final swim- they leave tomorrow for Ft Laramie.  It will be sad without them, they are super kids!

Tomorrow, I'm running over to the Badlands National Park- Tuesday, we're heading over to Mt Rushmore for a revisit. 

We changed the balance of the trip for the last week of July and the first week of August back to the original plan- I had forgotten that we had prepurchased baseball tickets for the Cubs and White Sox, so we will now not dip back down into Missouri and see my sister Sherry this trip.  Well go across Iowa from Omaha, then head up to the Rockford Illinois area for a week before Brandon makes his plane on August 6th to go home. 

I'll miss a few parks, but pick up some others, so it will be even there.  We'll do the Southern Missouri parks when we do the family reunion in 2013, if it comes off.   

Hot hot hot here today, temps crowding 100, if not over...