Day 1-3

At the time of this writing, nothing has been uploaded to these sites of the trip so check back later.

Pictures

Videos

Note: If you are looking through pictures and notice a squirrel that seems out of place, it's our mascot, Stan the Squirrel.

Well this is finally our first time around internet access so we can get an update out. We have been through NC, VA, WV, KY, IN, IL, MO, IO, SD and now in WY. Doctor has planned our trip to go through all the states that start with the letter 'I' and now we only need ID. We have logged a lot of quality hours together. Hauser, DR, James, Foster and Swammy have done most of the driving with Snow and Rick helping along the way.

The first day we traveled into St. Louis, MO and went up into the archway and got to look down onto the flooded river and the capitol building. We missed the fireworks that night because it would have put us out on the town too late, but we did get to see some on the drive out of town along the highway. Bonus story for all the people who went to Washington D.C. on the mission trip for the Fourth: We were getting back on the tram to get out of town and there we were getting onto the car too slowly and some of us got left behind and waited on another tram. The first car got to the parking lot where we got off and I called Hauser to get his ETA. They were riding on the tram and over the loudspeaker they were told the tram was going out of order so they were shoved off the tram at a random spot and told to wait (Very similar to DC, just not in the ghetto or told to wait on a bus). They got another one a few minutes later and arrived (Chris Hauser is a curse). We went on down the road to the church and laid down for the night after over 700 miles of driving.

Day 2: Some awoke around 5 to fight for position in the shower line. Everyone had to share one shower in the guys bathroom so that was a little different. We were told we needed to be out around 8 am and ready for service but service didn't start until 9:30. Since we had some time to spare Dr did a little Sunday School lesson and Snow did a few songs then we headed over to preaching service. They had somewhat of a special service. A few of them went to El Salvador on a mission trip and about 7 of them went up and spoke a little about the trip. It was pretty impactful hearing their testimonies about a mission trip when that's the entire reason we had stopped by their church. The pastor there was a little more energetic than Dr. He did some kind of a fight song and after the closing prayer, it's ritual for the pastor to say "Ready" and the congregation would follow with "Break" and a single unison clap. He mentioned that if he wasn't a preacher, he would be coaching a football team somewhere. After that we got a group picture then headed out again. For lunch we made our way into the McStop and had McFood and only spent about 90 McMinutes there for unexpected McShopping. We spent most of our day in MO and ended up in Sioux City, IO. When we had for the most part settled into the church, Drew and Zach were being a nuisance and Hauser took a pvc pipe and javelined it into the back of Drew's back and then Zach was hanging from the basketball goal and someone mentioned he looked like a pinata and Hauser thought that's what he was and gave him a good whack. That simmered them down for a while.

Day 3: Today we left out heading toward Mt. Rushmore. In South Dakota there were around 500 signs about a store called Wall Drug, which is wallways in season. Since it was apparently such a big landmark we had to make a stop there. Brittany and Paige describes Wall Drug as, "An old-timey western outlet mall." I'm not too sure that the guys really appreciated the stop as much as the the girls, but it was a good time to get some food and free bumper stickers. After departing there, we were only a few hours out from Mt. Rushmore. When we got there we tried to get a picture of the group holding up the Ripple. We had to get some one else to try and get the picture for us so we could all be in the picture. After 3 unsuccessful photographers who didn't seem to think that we would want to get the entire Mt. Rushmore in our picture with it.

For tomorrow (Day 4): We are looking forward to going into Yellowstone and hopefully see a buffalo.

P.S.

Paige, Carl and DR are losing their minds. Brittany doesn't seem far behind.