Day 3 - July 3

Quote of the day from Hyrum: "Mom, those faces are all art!"

We attended Sacrament Meeting at the Cody First Ward. Their meeting house is home to a beautiful mural depicting much of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including some famous depictions of pioneers crossing the plains of Nebraska and Wyoming. (We didn't take our cameras in...we should find some pictures to fill in here later. It is well worth visiting all on its own.)

Today was fast and testimony meeting. The women who bore their testimonies all did so with a microphone being passed around the chapel. The men who bore their testimonies all did so from the pulpit. Malauna took particular note of this.

We completed Wyoming this day. The state of Wyoming has more interesting scenery than we've ever been led to believe.

Heart Mountain

At the hotel in Cody they had a newspaper article at check in from a few days ago, showing a section of highway US14 falling off of the mountain owing to the unusual amount of snow melt and rain of this year; they said that it was still closed. So they recommended we take US14A instead. (Ryan had been thinking of US16, but they said that there was flooding by the town of Ten Sleep as well...how cool of a name is that for a town?)

The climb up into the Bighorn Mountains on 14A was completely surreal! The pictures raise my pulse, but they by no means do it justice at all. (Ryan's working on several panoramas that he took--should post later.)

At the top of the mountain pass, we discovered we were just a few miles away from Medicine Wheel National Monument, which Ryan had read about before and had considered going to, but had decided it wasn't the right trip and had since forgotten about. It was lunch time so we decided we'd go up there to eat and Ryan and Sabrina would go on the hike to see the Medicine Wheel. We started wondering about that as we took the dirt-road 2-mile diversion off of the highway and saw how much snow there was along the way. So it wasn't too surprising to learn once we got there that the 2-mile hiking trail was completely covered in a large section by a 30 foot snow drift.

The park rangers wouldn't let anyone go; a very kind female ranger told us that a geologist had gone there with snow shoes and crampons last week, but that even then it wasn't very safe. The snow was melting like crazy, but there was so much of it, it'll probably be there for two more weeks still, which is unheard of before this year. Still, Roderic and Hyrum had a blast kicking snow in the trenches that the rangers were shoveling for around 20 minutes or more.

We just ate lunch. Sabrina said it was cool, until Roderic threw a snowball at her back. Mom said: "And then it got even cooler, huh? It's not very often that your brother gets to hit you with a snowball on July 3."

We saw 2 different accidents - one on the highway and one on the freeway--both involving a SUV/truck and the campers they were pulling. Both apparently jack-knifed by crosswinds. Totally demolished! Thankful to not be towing anything!

We arrived at Mount Rushmore about 8:45 pm. We got to watch the night program and the retiring of the colors.

We love all the best that America has stood for, and are proud to be Americans! We loved our time at Mount Rushmore, and I bet the kids felt part of a bigger nation than they have before. There were relatively a lot of people there.

Afterwards, Leo decided he needed to climb up all of the stairs of the amphitheater by himself--and he did. Here he is after reaching the top.

To get good pictures at night, Ryan really needed a tripod. But he tried, and tried, to have a steady hand with a long exposure...and among maybe 20 shots, these two above turned out fairly decent.

After stopping in the gift shop, Hyrum looked back at Mount Rushmore and exclaimed the quote of the day. "Mom! Those heads are all art!)