Devil’s Tower/Mt. Rushmore/September 2001 Diane and I decided to take a little road trip to Devil’s Tower and Mt. Rushmore. I had gotten some information from our neighbors, Chas and Jennifer Vanderwilt who had just gone there. A few days before we left, I told Diane I had this crazy idea. I said why don’t we take Quinn with us. She agreed and when we asked Sam about it he reaction was, “Are you sure?” He would keep asking us that until the day we left. You see, Quinn is a special 3 y/o boy. He is smart, strong willed, and wants to know how everything in the world works, or will explain to you how everything in the world works. Also, he knows buttons are made for pushing, even if it is a fire alarm. We stopped him before he got to that one. We had our work cut out for us. We had a DVD player that hangs off the front seat in front of Q’s car seat. We picked him up about 12:30 and headed out for our six hour drive to Casper, WY. He was very interested in the first DVD we put in, Jungle Book 2, …for while. What he really likes is Paw Patrol which is on Netflix and requires internet access. We switched to that but when we lost the internet signal, he became bored. We had hoped he would take a nap but no luck with that. We stopped once to let him pee. When I told him to go ahead, he said, “We don’t pee in the street”. I told him we were making an exception. We pulled into Casper about 7 pm and checked into the room, at which Q stated, “Wow, cool room.” We were all tired so I went to “Old McDonalds” and got us something to eat. The next morning I said lets go get some breakfast. He and I went down to the breakfast buffet and got some food. Quinn struck up a conversation with an older gentleman sitting next to us. Diane joined us a few minutes later and then it was back to the room and packing up. We left for our 3 hour drive to Devil’s Tower. We could see the tower well before we got there. The parking lot was nearly full but we managed to find a spot and walked towards the tower. We walked part way around the Tower. At an information site a woman was explaining to Quinn how the tower was formed and then Quinn corrected her and gave his version of how it was formed. It went something like this, “There was a big volcano with fire and the firemen came and put water on the fire and the volcano was dead”. Sounded good to me. We made our way back to the car and began our two hour drive to Custer, SD where we would be staying for two nights. We checked in and since we still had ample daylight left, we decided to go see the Crazy Horse museum and the partially finished sculpture of Crazy Horse. We looked around the museum, watched a Indian presentation for awhile and took in the views of Crazy Horse. They still have a long way to go to finish that. It was started in 1948!. On the way back to the motel we stopped and treated Quinn(and ourselves) to ice cream and pie. Quinn and I pulled on our bathing suits and went down to the pool. He especially enjoyed the hot tub. We went to bed pretty early in preparation for the next big day. Quinn woke up and said, “Lets go get some breakfast”. I was up for that so we went down and got some food. He really likes these motel breakfast buffets. Diane joined us a little later and then we headed out to go to Mt. Rushmore or as Quinn called it, “The Men on the Mountain”. We got there early. The weather was a fantastic cloudless fall day. We walked past a row of flags of all the states and onto a viewing area where we had great views of “The Men”. We went inside where masks were mandatory and watched a film about the making of Mt. Rushmore. After that we went outside to begin a walk that takes you to the base of the mountain. We told Quinn he could take his mask off but he wanted to keep it on. We got as close as one could to the base of the mountain and then headed back. We went to some shops outside the park and got Quinn a T shirt and socks with Mt. Rushmore on them. And a tiny American flag that it seemed he could not live without. We got back in the car for our drive through Custer State Park. This was a “can’t miss” drive according to our neighbors. We started out on Iron Mountain road and found it was very twisty and curvy with several one lane tunnels to go through. We got views of Mt Rushmore from several vantage points, once by looking through a tunnel. We continued on and entered the park and went to the State Game Lodge where we had a buffet lunch in a classic, rustic old building. After lunch we drove through the Wildlife Loop where we saw literally thousands of buffalo, some of them right next to the car or staring us down on the road. We made our back to Custer feeling pretty tired. That did not keep Quinn from wanting to go to the pool. There we met a family from Oklahoma who had a couple of kids a bit older than Quinn. Of course, Quinn wanted to play with them. We got a recommendation from them for a restaurant and when we were ready to go eat we went to the Mt. Rushmore Brewery Restaurant. The food was very good. Back at the motel we again turned in early to rest up for our long drive the next day. The next morning, Quinn again woke up with “Lets go get some breakfast”. I said OK and turned on a light to which he said, “That’s too bright for grandma”. So, went to breakfast and Diane joined us. Quinn spoke with his friend he met at the pool. We packed up and got a pretty early start for our 9 hour drive home. Quinn alternated between watching Paw Patrol on Diane’s phone when we had internet and watching The Incredibles or Shrek when we didn’t have internet. We made good time and got to Quinn’s house about 6 PM. Mission accomplished, we brought him back alive! <