Today we arrived back home after 2 weeks of vacation and playing.  We are totally exhausted from the 26 hours of driving, however!  We left on Friday at noon after the Salmon River Days Parade (4th of July celebration) and took 2 1/2 days to get home.  Since we had 2 cars and only 3 drivers, we had to take it a little easier.  We stayed in Sheridan Wyoming the first night (at Angela’s brother’s place) which was very nice of them to let us do that.  We finally went out of  our way a bit and saw Devil’s Tower national monument.  This is partly where the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was filmed.  🙂 

After that, we drove to Wall, SD where we spent a couple of hours resting and letting the boys run around.  They got sopping wet and loved playing in the water!  Wall is where the famous Wall Drug drugstore was founded.  Wall Drug earns much of its fame from its self-promotion.  Billboards advertising the establishment can be seen for hundreds of miles throughout South Dakota and the neighboring states.  In addition, many visitors of Wall Drug have erected signs throughout the world announcing the miles to Wall Drug from famous locations.  Wall Drug says it gives away more than 20,000 cups of water per day during the peak tourist season (summer months).  It’s not too far from Mount Rushmore and the Badlands.

We stayed Saturday night in Minnesota and went to church in Austin at a VERY small ward that doubled in size becuase a family reunion was there.  Wow, that sounds like our family in Salmon!  🙂  We kept driving after that and finally got home at 6pm this evening.  I drove the whole way and Sarah drove for about 3 hours of it.  I am very proud of Angela who doesn’t usually drive that many hours but was a GREAT trooper and did it!  🙂 

We got everything unpacked and now are packing up Sarah and Brittany to go to EFY early tomorrow morning.  Their beds tonight will be just like another hotel bed for them.  They will be gone all next week!  I have the fun job of driving 2 hours south and picking them up on Saturday.  🙂

It’s nice to be home and get to sleep in our own beds tonight!