South Dakota-Tuesday

Tuesday, August 24

Allie and I woke up and walked down to Common Grounds, a coffee shop, to get some drinks.

On the way out to the ranch, we first stopped off at Aunt Teresa’s house so Allie could visit. What a nice lady! She had some cobbler for us to eat and their house was beautiful. It was built to be the fajther’s workshop, but when he got sick, the townsfolk got together and helped them to make it into a home. The stairs are a little dizzying but it seems like a fun place to live.

We also stopped at Keystone, an equivalent gateway community to Gardiner, only it's outside Mount Rushmore, and grabbed some ice cream and Mexican. The lunch was okay but not expensive so it all equaled out. We also ran through a really neat antique store and I found a butter cutter so that I can make real pie crusts now. This is also the closest I got to finding a mechanical bull. Sigh. At least there is always Great Falls

On the way out to the ranch, we played I Spy which was surprisingly difficult at times considering there was really only the open road ahead of us.

We finally got to Allie’s family ranch which was incredibly beautiful. The house was a kit from Sears that the family had lived in. With only two true bedrooms and one bath, I don’t know how they survived with the many, many children (8?) that they had.

We hopped in the truck and rode around. Emily and I sat in the back of the truck with the pupsters and just enjoyed the scenery.

Allie took us down to her favorite tree and we hung out until dusk.

We went for a moonlit walk and then went to bed.