Dreary

Wow--Thursday turned out to be quite the dreary day. So we stayed in at the Watiki Water Park--attached to our hotel. The girls had fun climbing on a kids water play area and riding the lazy river ride. They also braved lots of high water slides...some of which looped outside through the window...very brave. Julia's smiling face was priceless when she came to the bottom of the slide. Poor Bob had to climb the stairs about 20 times to ride with them each time...mama don't do water slides...but I manned the Lazy River about 60 times...and got a rash on my arms to prove it--gross!

We were going to try to go to Crazy Horse but it was soooooo foggy and raining sideways, so we gave in to Emma's request to stop by the Presidential Wax Museum. It was interesting and we each got our own audio tour--a speaking wand to hear presentations about ALL the presidents...even Sophie & Julia were able to dial in the right number to hear the info. Julia lost interest around President Roosevelt (me too) but it was interesting all the same.




After the wax museum, the rain had cleared a bit so we decided to see if the weather was the same up at Crazy Horse. The drive was pretty & we went through several small mountain towns that looked a lot like home...although here they have a Dairy Queen in every town...haven't had time to stop there...
When we got to Crazy Horse, it wasn't raining anymore so we went on in...it was actually cooler, I thought, because fog kept drifting in and out of the monument...really eerie and neat. They have a really great visitors center--lots of Native American art, clothing, artifacts, photographs...a lot of time went in to putting it all together. We saw a short film about the history of the sculptor (who will not accept government aid for the project) and the monument. It is going to be enormous (the Mt. Rushmore heads would fit in Crazy Horse's head alone!). We also saw a short dance program by Lakota Sioux which was well done (although the girls would not get up and dance in the audience participation time...boo) and they each got to pick a piece of blasted rock from the monument to bring home. It got too foggy to see the laser light show they usually have every night but the trip up there was definitely worth it!! We're hoping we'll be around to see the finished product!!!