Wednesday July 18th...Howdy folks! We woke up this morning and went to eat a huge Cowboy Breakfast at our ranch. Boy, was it good! We then took the scenic route through Custer National Park to eventually end up at Mount Rushmore. The girls really liked that. Jeff and I would have really liked to take more time and just learn a lot of history but you can't with 3 young girls. When we went inside the museum Haley just wanted to go back outside and "see those 4 faces again". The scenic route was gorgeous. We could see the Monument from on top of an adjoining mountain, peeking through the stone cliffs. We could get out and walk amoung the cliffs. It was breath taking. During the scenic drive we found our buffalo!!! We drove through the Wildlife Loop of Custer Natl Park and came upon herds of hundreds of buffalo. It was really neat! After that we started back to our cabin and came into a HUGE rain storm, sounds like you had it in Iowa too. There was golf ball size hail and we thought for sure our windshield was going to break with us in the van. We tried to shelter ourselves under a tree but it didn't help much. We received quite a few dents from the hail! When we arrived back to our cabin it had rained so hard that the sky light was leaking, all over the bed! They brought more bedding, and although it rained more, it didn't leak again. They said they hadn't rained it about 3 months there! After the rain slowed down we went "panning for gold" at Wades Gold Mine. A family that owns a "claim" will teach you to pan for gold. They guarantee pieces of gold (flecks). I think Mikayla found 8 and the other 2 got 6 or 7. It was really enjoyable!! That night we went to Circle B Chuckwagon Dinner. It was a Cowboy dinner and show. The food was awesome! The girls enjoyed pretending to lasso and I bought the girls cowgirl hats.