Tuesday, May 28

Having finally made it on vacation, we dove right in to our adventure with a little canoeing trip down the Niobrara River in Valentine. The weather started out cool, but the sun came out and it was nice! We had 2 canoes, Brian had one with Will and Grace in it, I had the other with Xander. It was a pretty easy trip down the river, not too much rowing because the river was moving fast from all the rain they'd had. That fast rushing turned out to be my downfall...

 

At the end, we had a landing where we supposed to stop and drag the canoes in. Well, the water was moving pretty fast and I missed the landing. I panicked and started frantically rowing, only to end up with my canoe backwards in the water. I tried to correct it, but I just couldn't. I ended up just ramming the canoe into the bank about 20 feet down from the landing, well, that turned out to be a bad choice. Xander and I got dumped! Fortunately, the river is only 2 feet deep, so we were just able to stand up but sadly, my flip flops floated away! Luckily, we were right at where our car was parked and we were able to change and not have to sit in wet clothes all day!

 

 A few shots of us pre- trip. Good thing I didn't take my camera on the canoe - we wouldn't have had any pictures of the rest of the trip!

 

After a quick lunch at McDonald's we were off, bound for South Dakota. We stopped in Keystone, with intentions of going to Mt. Rushmore, but we stopped and hit the alpine slides instead, because there was a good chance of rain all the other days we were there.

The kids LOVED the alpine slides. In fact, Will threw up his arm and said "Yay! Let's do that again!" Unfortunately, each trip was $10, so we did not do it again! But it was fun once. Incidentally, Grace came down the hill at a snail's pace, super slow. What a cautious girl!

 

We walked around a little in Keystone and had dinner and got some ice cream. Then we had to drive to Rapid City to check into our hotel and rest. Plus Xander and I needed to shower after our dunking in the river!