Rapid City Get Away

A trip I had this month ended up with a 30 hour layover in Rapid City. It is such a cool place to visit. I asked the kiddos who wanted an all expense vacation get away for 30 hours in the exotic hot spot of sweet South Dakota. Well I got 2 takers: Austin and Nicole. Casey had several social events, so she and Karen stayed home. I was flying the trip and we did not get into Rapid City until almost 2am. There were more delays than I care to remember! The kids were troopers though and got to sit in first class. They will do about anything if they can sit in first class and get a free banana and OJ. I made them get up early as we had a full day of sight seeing. It was a whirlwind tour.

Hey! Get up sleepy heads. You had 5 hours sleep, what's the deal?

Every-time we rent a car Austin begs for a cool car. We always have to get something large we can all fit in. This was the most important part of the trip for the boy. Well we got a Dodge Charger with a Hemi. Can you tell the excitement??

Our first stop was Bear Country. "Lions and tigers and bears oh my." It was very cool.

We saw bears everywhere and they can walk right up to your car and look in. Good thing I got the scratch and dent insurance.

A Snow Wolf

Why does the bear cross the road? I am not sure but it was cool to see.

They also had plenty of babies to look at and were very cute.

After Bear Country we drove on down to Mount Rushmore. Such an amazing place. All of the carving they did back in the 1930s without one loss of life. Dynamite, jack hammers and hanging off the cliff of the mountain. It's really amazing.

When you enter the area you first walk down a hall of flags. Each representing one of our great states. It was here where a lady bumped into the kids and said to Austin, "Oh I am sorry girls have a nice day". It was so funny. Maybe he needs a hair cut?

It was a beautiful day!

We tried so many times to get people to take a picture of all three of us. Most came out fuzzy or as one lady said. "I am not sure if it is OK I don't have my glasses on." When I looked at it we weren't even in the picture. I almost laughed out loud.

There was this cool area where you walked into a little tunnel space and looked up through a crack to see George Washington.

Hey! Who you lookin at?

Then on to Crazy Horse. He is a famous Indian Chief that would not surrender. The monument is so big that Mt Rushmore fits inside his face.

This is what it will look like when it is complete. It's a family project that has been in the works since the 1940s. It is funded completely through private donations.

Then on to Needles Highway. We drove through some very cool tunnels along the winding highway.

As we drove along I was wondering why it was called Needles Highway. Well we came around a corner to see exactly why. There is a path that is barely wide enough to drive through. It looked like there was no way you could drive through it. Kind of like a Needle. Oh, I get it!

We found plenty of hills to climb along the way.

And we had to conquer each of them!

Oh, did I mention there were buffalo! It is kind of weird because they roam free and can walk right up to your car. This one was ticked off and had just been running and kicking.

A whole herd moving on to greener pastures.

There were lots of babies too.

"Well Mr. Insurance man it was like this. A giant buffalo just came out of nowhere and rammed the car."

We had so much fun! I would definitely recommend seeing were the Buffalo roam. I might even break into song........

Up Up and away!

This weekend was a boys retreat. The girls went to Florida for our nieces graduation but the boys could not go for the entire time so we were on our own. Well, we made the best of it and did a mini retreat boy style. Austin and I went with our great friends Roger and Grant.

First was an air-show complete with a jet powered school bus. This thing had bad boy written all over it. It used an F-14 (fighter jet engine) and could cruise at over 300 mph. It would do a burn out that was really a blast. Get it.

There was also a jet powered outhouse. I have only seen one of those before and that was after a bean burrito. Hot Stuff!

We were able to see the small acrobatic airplanes fly amazing routines as well as the military fighters including the Blue Angels, my favorite.

The weather was a little rough. 65 and rain but it still was very cool!

Then it was off to the hotel, which included an indoor go-cart track and giant water park. We had a blast. We swam until they kicked us out and then got up early to be the first ones in. Crazy, but fun! As you can see there were all kinds of very cool activities for us. We played until we could play no more.

The end of the day there were 2 very tired boys, hanging out in the lazy river.

When the Cat is away...

Gotcha YA!

GaGa is up for a visit and is staying in the basement and the other day she told me that the lid to the toilet had just snapped off. Well after a million jokes, I went and looked at it and sure enough it had just snapped on both of the hinges. I could not believe it. So I replaced the lid with a new one and asked her what she was doing with it. She informed me that just normal stuff. Well, I am on a trip and could not leave it alone so I installed a hidden camera to see what the heck was going on. Check out this picture. I knew it!

Turn on a little praise and worship music and watch out. I think she is doing the running man dance.

Her new Indian name is "One with Stool". It use to be "One with Wind" but that is another story. Never a dull moment!

(Just kidding about the hidden camera. Karen caught this picture.)

Indianapolis

When I am on the road I love staying downtown and seeing the sites. You would never guess that Indianapolis was such a beautiful city. It is designed to really enjoy the downtown environment. There is a canal walk that runs by the Capitol and ends at the Baseball park. It is beautiful and there are many condos that are on the canal. It is a perfect place to jog or walk. There are paddle boats you can rent and paddle all along the canal. Very beautiful.

Along the canal was a very cool memorial. It is the Medal of Honor Recipients. It is the highest honor that is given to our servicemen. When you read the stories of their heroic actions you can not believe their huge sacrifice.

See if you can read this. It is pretty amazing. The order of importance is:

Purple Heart

Bronze Star

The Distinguished Flying Cross

The Silver Star

The Distinguished Service Medal

The Air Force Cross

The Distinguished Service Cross

The Navy Cross

The Medal of Honor

The heroic actions to receive the Medal of Honor is in most cases fatal to those who receive it.

Hotel Flying

Wow

When they say Airport Hotel they really mean it. This is a video standing on the deck of our room in Miami. It was a cloudy day and you could watch the planes pop out of the clouds and fly by. Very cool, got a love it!

Charter Bus

This trip is a NBA charter. There are several Airbus aircraft that are specially fitted to only fly the NBA stars around. They are what they call above first class. The aircraft in this configuration holds about 50 people. Normally it holds 150 people. It is like having a very large personal jet. Very cool.

It is a long day for us. We started in Minneapolis and picked up a team and dropped them in Dallas and then we flew empty to Oklahoma City and picked up another team. We flew that team to Houston and then flew empty back to Dallas to be in position to fly a team back to Minneapolis the next day. We get in about 2am. The Next day we fly a team back to Minneapolis and then on to Portland Oregon. Wow what a trip. I will keep you posted. The food is amazing. I think my nick name will be fat boy after this trip. Each of the seats have individual video systems and about anything you could possibly want is on board.

This picture is Dallas. We fly into the downtown airport which is very close to downtown. kind of cool.

Snow Days

February has been a snow filled month. It is beautiful and cumbersome all in one. When we are flying it presents some obstacles as all of the snow and ice has to be removed from the aircraft to safely fly. The tricky part is it has to stay off as you taxi out to the runway when it is snowing. The first picture is the cumbersome part of snow in the winter. We are in line getting the snow blown off the aircraft before we can takeoff. It is pretty cool to watch. This Star Wars like contraption works it's way around the plane spraying off any snow and then applying a special mix that absorbs any falling snow so the wings are clear when we takeoff.

The next pictures are some cool pictures of the snow from around the country. One is in Chicago as they are trucking out the snow from the airport and another from the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City. You can see how close the mountains are to the airport.

The small lines in the center of the mountain is a strip mine. This mountain is just West of Salt Lake.

See ya soon