Our trip to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills

This October Brian and I traveled to the Black Hills to see Mount Rushmore. This had been on my list of places to see for a long time. We drove through three loops in the Black Hills . They all were spectacular scenery. The square view of Mt Rushmore is through a single car tunnel . The lake is Sylvan Lake. It was featured in the second National Treasure movie. We hiked all the way around it. The rock formation is called Needles. They are spectacular!

The Badlands

The Badlands are beautiful in a very different way. Very rugged. We hiked a one mile trail into them to a ladder that was to lead us to a unique view. No so.

Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, N.Dak.

We were able to squeeze one more site into our weekend. This is a working archaeological dig where they have found over 50 skeletal remains of wooly mammoths. They are still finding them. Volunteers and interns come every summer and dig. They leave the bones where they are when they unearth them as they are not fossilized and are fragile. This was a sinkhole that filled woth water from a spring and they believe when the animals came to drink they fell in and were unable to get out so drowned. It's an amazing place.

Basement Ready For Carpet!

This is the bigger room, Looking from each end. Can't wait to see it with carpet. !

FInal Stages of Basement Remodel

Thought I would share with those that are interested a few pictures of the basement. These are of the rooms that are getting carpet laid as I write. These pictures show them cleaned out and ready for the carpet.

The first one is looking down the stairs. Kind of dark but shows the color at the base of the stairs . The room is to the right at the base of the stairs. New wall hiding Brians workbench and soon to be back to my sewing area.

Current Status

Here's the finished fireplace and a few of the painted walls . The next step is building free standing storage cabinets for another room. Today we sanded and primed part of the pieces. Ill try to post more pictures in a few days.

Jose and Brian at the end of the day. The fireplace is done ! The hearth and mantle are coevered in plastic til the final cleaning of the stone.

FInishing the firplace

The next step was to finish the fireplace. We picked out the stone and found a beautiful peice of solid cherry for a mantle. Brian got everything ready but was feeling a little out of his comfort zone. The Lord sent us Jose, a professional stone mason Brian had met at the brick company to help. Jose volunteered to come and help Brian for a day. They were able to finish the entire fireplace in 11 marathon hours. alot of trips up and down the basement stairs to cut the stone in the garage. Brian stopped counting at one hundred trips. The finished product is beautiful and we are extremely grateful for our new friend Jose. We couldn't have done it without him.

basement project

This fall we started a remodel/finish of our basement. These pictures are for our family and friends who have asked for pictures. We have drywalled and insulated the outside walls, built built-in cabinets at one end of the large room, installed a gas fireplace. All this was done before Christmas. We cleaned the basement up for Aidan and Jaxon to be able to play . You can see the fireplace in the corner behind the chair. It is just installed in the drywall for now.

Sol Duc Trail and Falls

We also hiked to Sol Duc Falls to the site of a virtual geocache. We enjoyed geocacheing as we made our way around the Peninsula.

Olympic Peninsula

After leaving Meg's we toured the Olympic Peninsula for a week. We stayed in Port Angeles for a couple of days . We drove by beautiful Crescent Lake and hiked through a rain forest to Marymere Falls in the Olympic Park .

Grand kids continued

Here's a few more pictures taken before we took Ben to school. Aidan loves to jump on his trampoline and play outside in the backyard.
He loves to play Rock Band with whoever will play with him. Here's Ben and he playing together.

Grand kids

Here are a few pictures of our precious grand kids, Aidan 2yrs and Jaxon now 5 months. We had fun visiting the Vancouver Zoo and just hanging out together.

Ucluelet

After leaving Tofino we drove south along the coast to Ucluelet. The coast was very different from the sandy beaches at Tofino. Very rugged and beautiful.We hiked the Pacific Rim Trail.

Tofino, September

WE are finally getting around to publishing some pictures from our trip to BC, Canada. WE visited Megan before taking Ben to Capernwray Harbour Bible School on Thetis Island. ( off Vancouver Island ). After taking Ben to school we visited Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. These pictures are taken on Meares Island where we took a boardwalk to one of the largest red cedar trees in Canada. The tsunai sign we thought interesting as we had never seen one before . Note the little guy trying to get up the cliff.