Month: June 2007

I worked hard on our vacation scrapbook yesterday, determined to finish it up this week, and guess what I’m printing off online right now? Yes, my post title kind of gives it away: Patriotic songs.

You see, they were a big part of my childhood traveling days, before portable dvd players became necessities, when families learned relationship skills by having to get along for several more miles of the ABC billboard game or another round of The Minister’s Cat. My family traveled a lot.

While in the car, my mom taught us every patriotic song out there, and we belted them out from sea to shining sea. And she knew the stories behind them also. I’ll never forget our trip to the top of Pike’s Peak, how she told of Katharine Lee Bates, and how a wagon ride to the summit of this mountain stirred her to write the lyrics to the hymn, “America the Beautiful”.

So on our recent trip to the Black Hills we sang. We sang “God Bless The U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood, “Grand Old Flag”, “This Land is Your Land”, “The National Anthem”, “My Country Tis Of Thee”…my eyes are watering just remembering. They’re not just songs, they’re the spoken melody of those moments when we’re so inspired we can’t speak, such as that moment between dusk and dark when Mount Rushmore is illuminated to those that have lingered for the final ceremonies.

As we sang, certain songs brought back memories…for three years my older daughters and their cousin have sung the National Anthem to open the local youth rodeo. My oldest won alternate top blue for singing “This Land is Your Land” at 4H Club Days. We’ll never forget hearing Acappella sing live, and their rendition of “God Bless the U.S.A.”

With July 4th right around the corner, why not start teaching your children the great tunes of our nation?

The family car, surrounded by this great country and God’s creation, is a pretty good place to start!

…and I’m off to insert these lyrics into our scrapbook…

We saw Mount Rushmore, even walked the new (to me) Presidential Trail and stayed for the Ranger’s Program at 9 PM. Patriotic and inspiring don’t even do it justice…but interestingly, my favorite part of our trip found us meandering the switchbacks and tunnels and granite spires of Needles Highway. If you ever go to the southwestern corner of South Dakota, you must treat yourself to both Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road.

These scenic routes will both land you in the vicinity of Mount Rushmore, and have many outlooks along the way full of granite outcroppings to clamber upon and around. Great family photo opportunities abound. Sadly, my youngest slept through most of these pleasure jaunts. The best outlook exploring/picture taking we did was on Needles Highway at the outlook between the first two tunnels as you head north on 87. I even marked its location on our map, that’s how much we enjoyed it.

I just have to say that for the money, you can’t beat this area of South Dakota, especially if you’re camping at $15 a night as we were. We took our own food, and gas cost us $287 total for a week away (and remember, we drive a gas-chugging Suburban!). Everything we most enjoyed was free…these highways, and the Wildlife Loop Road we took every morning and night to exit our campground. Even Mount Rushmore is free except for the $8 parking garage fee. The best things about Iron Mountain Road were its pigtail bridges and that all the tunnels framed Mount Rushmore. We also saw plenty of wildlife along the beginning of this route…buffalo families, antelope and their young, etc.

We gave the girls some spending money for the rock shops in Custer, and for the kettle fresh taffy we watched being made at Rushmore Mountain Taffy Shop in Keystone. We visited Cosmos where no one stands straight and balls roll uphill, Bear Country U.S.A. with its hundreds of bears on 250 acres, and Evan’s Plunge a natural hot springs swimming resort that refills itself 13 or more times each day at a rate of 5,000 gallons per minute!

But all those things merely succeeded in wearing us out, fun as they were. I’m so glad we started out that first morning exploring and playing in French Creek near our Bluebell campsite. That and Needles Highway were our personal family favorites.

…it’s hard to see them, but my girls are atop rocks in the two middle pics…

South Dakota weather won us over…cold at night, chilly in the morning and evenings, and hot during the day. Lovely for camping to be able to snuggle down deep into your sleeping bag, and enjoy hot chocolate w/marshmallows first thing in the morning.

This is my youngest daughter and myself on our second morning, note all the gray hair I have at age 31. Strangely, dh loves it. Or so he says…I guess his opinion will save me a bundle in hair coloring and upkeep!

Anyway, that second morning after the hot chocolate, we had biscuits and gravy for breakfast. I’d browned some ground beef at home and frozen it for the journey, and took a packet of McCormick’s Old-Fashioned Homestyle Gravy mix…it was so good I may not ever make hamburger gravy from scratch again! (Except I know it’s much better for us!) At any rate, I highly recommend it for camping, it was one of our favorite breakfasts and very easy. I’d also made biscuits prior to the trip, and I wrapped a bunch of them in foil and placed them on the grill for a few minutes to heat. Yum!

Of course, the girls had to roast marshmallows with every campfire meal!

And for a bonus, here’s a picture of my six year old inside our tent. My mom sent two wildflower books along, one with a flower-color directory focusing on varieties of the Black Hills. Fascinating. That’s what dd is reading. You can see she’s wearing her jacket. Like I said, chilly mornings there!

After harrowing t-storms the night we set up our tent, we woke up to crisp clean air, sunlight filtering through pine trees and no mud to speak of! (Big sigh of relief from this mama!)

We decided to eat a quick breakfast (I think it was Jessica who recommended buying those small boxes of very sugary cereal and just pouring the milk into the waxed paper cereal pouch? Went over GREAT!) and took off on a morning hike across the hills to an outcropping of rock that overlooked our campsite and the area around us.

What a view…and just the night before, we’d seen elk grazing on this same hillside. Best of all, our height allowed us this very welcome sight: French Creek!

So we hiked down this incredible countryside, hubby with toddler clinging to his back…

And played in the cool waters with the minnows and crawdads.

When one of our girls slipped and fell with a splash, dh was quick to join her so she‘d laugh it off…

We hiked the horse trail home, feasted on chili dogs and had a family devotion!

A great first morning, wouldn’t you say?

And I’ve got the poison ivy to prove it!

We arrived home around midnight Thursday from our South Dakota camping trip! Friday was a blur of unpacking and at least six loads of laundry, hosing out three coolers, chasing away the house-webs that took over during our absence, getting umpteen rolls of film developed…etc.

Yesterday was more laid-back…we three girls worked on our individual photo albums, filling them with our trip-pics. Oldest made peanut butter cookies, 6 yo had to get some crafting in (having gone all week without her fix) so she sewed up a diaper bag for her baby sis. For lunch we had the last of the biscuits I’d taken on the camping trip with hamburger gravy…

Then we threw a couple salads together, cut up a watermelon and made a peaches and cream pie. Marinated some steaks for supper. We had hubby’s parents over for a thank-you meal–they did our animal chores each night the week we were gone.

Our trip was wonderful, btw. We had the bestest of times all around. I’ll catch y’all up eventually. God was sooo good to us! It was one of those trips that you don’t want to end…I even got teary-eyed when I threw the last woodsy-campfire smelling towel in the wash…

Can’t wait to catch up on all your news! In the meantime, isn’t that burro the cutest? My oldest took the pic at Custer State Park. Even the baby burros were friendly…

Happy Sunday to you all!

Last week’s flurry of real life busyness spinning every which way and added to 50th anniversary “stuff” had me up each night wa-ay past midnight and up again early enough to get the girls ready for VBS at my sister’s church. But in the end, all the details worked together to make Saturday’s bash even better than I’d hoped it would be.

My sisters and I were pleased to find a favorite out-of-state uncle and his wife waiting at the reception building Thursday night when we arrived to decorate. With his help, 25 tables and the accompanying chairs went up quickly…we soon busied ourselves building backdrops for the cake table.

We used zip-ties to fasten several 4×6′ framed screens together and then covered them all with white plastic tablecloths. Over this we draped white lace in swags and trailed navy and gold gossamer liberally across the whole creation. Gossamer, btw, is a really affordable way to dress up a nice occasion. Beautiful looped bows… We got ours from shindigz.com, a great party supply online. We did a similar backdrop behind a table with photo albums that my mother put together from each of the five decades. They were a real hit, with many people crowded around picture-gazing at any given time.

We covered our guest tables with navy tablecloths, using 10″ gold foil doilies at the center of each, and a sprinkling of gold confetti bells. We’d had 4 of the windiest days to contend with, but amazingly, the hour that we picked up the 50 navy and gold helium balloons from the florists was calm and beautiful! Two balloons tied to a tulle-bundle of gold Hershey kisses were our centerpieces, centered on the foil doilies. Having all those balloons trailing up just filled the room with a festive feeling. We also made sure to leave plenty of Hershey kisses down the table’s centers for treats…

All of our “special tables” were covered with navy cloths, topped with white lace, except for the photo album table–we had a really beautiful gold tablecloth for it, also borrowed. The guest book table had many pretties we’d borrowed from a friend at church who in recent years had decorated for her parent’s 50th…candle holders that said “50 years” on them, gold wreaths, etc. Her box of 50th “supplies” was a real blessing.

We also had a picture-taking area…with a lattice archway and picket fences…I’d borrowed two baskets of yellow roses and white daisies from church that we set on pillars, and one of my sisters bedecked the arch with gauze and flower garlands, and more gossamer!

Tomorrow I’ll tell you what we served our out-of-state family and friends for Saturday’s lunch, including the best-ever recipes for smoked brisket, and a party-yummy dill dip recipe that you’ll want to try at your next gathering!