Eastward, Ho!

During Spring Break, we decided to trek eastward to South Dakota. Not a typical spring break destination, but it held 2 job interviews for us.

We spent ALOT of time in the car. Landen was actually pretty good for most of the trip. He cried only when we had to get somewhere and really couldn't afford the time to stop and play. Luckily it was only for about an hour.

We did drive many miles. Here is our road map. (It's pretty close to where we went)


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On Thursday we stopped in Lyman, NE to interview/ check out a farm. Dan was really nice and drove us around the farm and Landen had a great time getting out and looking out the window. He had 2 dogs that Landen really liked too. Dan wants to sell his farm mostly, and wants money for it. We were a little disappointed. These farmers all say they are willing to work with you, but when it comes down to it- really just want $$. And let's just say Michael and I don't have half a million dollars laying around. This area is super pretty though. They are starting to disc their fields and the winter wheat is starting to peep up.

Our next stop was out hotel in Rapid City. (which by the way, is only about 30 miles south of the geographic center of the US) We stayed at the Best Western for $35.70/night! Book with Hotels.com! It was a really nice "average" hotel. It was recently remodeled, and was really clean. They had a good contintental breakfast too! Our room was just a single king. Landen didn't sleep well away from home, but he liked our bed.



Friday, we woke up earlier than they served breakfast and started out toward Ipswich. Michael interviewed with Layne at a co-op for a precision ag specialist job. The interview went very well. This is probably our favorite job offer so far. It is a big co-op and he would be working with the argonomists to sell a software program that uses GPS to map fields and deliver pesticides, fertilizers, etc. It pays very well. Afterwards, we went to Aberdeen. Aberdeen is about 15 miles away and is about 25K people. They had a really nice *free* muesum that we walked around.



Then, we headed back to Rapid City. We stopped in Pierre at a Mexican restaraunt for dinner and it was really good. We got in earlier than Thursday and all went to bed early.

We got up Saturday, ate the awesome breakfast-- belagin waffles for me, biscuits and gravy for michael and banana for Landen. There is tons to do around Rapid City. And then we drove the 20 miles to Mount Rushmore. It was a BEAUTIFUL day. The Overlook there is really neat. We went on the Presidential Trail (about 1.5 miles loop) and read about the presidents and then visited the Muesuems.




This is where our map gets off.. We took Iron Mountain Road through Custer State Park. It was a really cool mountain road with pig-tail bridges. We stopped at the Norbeck Senic Outlook.




I wanted to take Needles Highway and see the Needles and Sylvan Rocks, but we made a wrong turn and ended up back in Keystone. So, we just drove northwest to Devils Tower. That is a neat place. It has a few information things about how it was formed and about the significance the place is to the Native Americans. It has prayer beads and cloths all over the forest around it. We went on another hike around the tower -- and it was covered in about 2 inches of slush so we were wet when we done.





Afterwards, we got settled in and drove all the way to Rexburg --like 10 hours away. We got there about 4 AM, and crashed. But Landen thought it was time to wake up at 6:30, since he slept through the night. Luckily, my mom watched Landen and let me and Michael take a nap later. We enjoyed talking to them and eating dinner. We even got home-taught by their home teachers, and then we finally decided we better get back in the car and head home.

We also picked up Penny, out new puppy! But I'll post more about her later.

Landen wasn't very happy about getting back in the car, but he endured and was rewarded by sleeping in his own bed. And he rewarded mom and dad by sleeping through the night! Yeah!

And that was eastward trek to South Dakota.