Thursday

Thursday, April 15

The day dawns at the normal time of 730am. Feeling terrible still, yuck. Chris is well on his way to better! We are out the door and head for breakfast. McD's. We should buy stock. lol Wow, we ate for only $5! Its mostly because I still had some apple pies from Pizza Hut from Wednesday night that I promised Chris I would eat for breakfast. Yum. They are actually not bad cold!

We head for our main destination for the day, Spokane Bar Sapphire Mine (www.sapphiremine.com) We went there last year and bought a bag of "dirt" that we mined. We got to keep anything we found. We found a bunch of sapphires and garnets. Our largest sapphire and garnet were both over 3 carats, unfinished. We originally planned to buy a bag and mine right there and buy a couple to take home to do this summer while relaxing in the pool. We instead just buy the bags we plan on taking home and a couple screens. We head out to our next destination, the Zoo in Billings, MT.

On the way, we find The Grizzly Experience. We decide to stop. I am always up for a bear display! We pull in and find out there are 4 bears there, and one of the owners is working. It was pretty neat to have one on one time with the "zoo keeper"! She gave lots of great information and it was interesting to learn more about the grizzly bear. There were two of the four bears out, they were playing and very active. We spent a long time there, watching, and talking to the owner. I got some great pictures and some awesome video of the two (Jake and Maggie), playing!

We spent so much time there, we were not able to make the zoo in Billings. Thats ok, I was pretty happy with what we did instead! We decide that we want to be a little closer to our destination for Friday, Mt Rushmore. We call it a day in Gillette, WY. We get settled and I get all our clothes together for the laundry. There is only one washer and one dryer, so it takes forever. Finally, at almost 11pm, the clothes are as done as they can be. We didnt get dinner before we got to the hotel, so Chris heads out to get a light snack. He is gone forever. When he gets back, I asked, what did you do, drive around until you found a Wendys? He said, no, I asked the cop who pulled me over! Ack! What??? lol ... Yea, Chris got pulled over for doing 39 in a 30. Ooops. It was 40, and he did not see the sign where it went down to 30. Cop told him, Wendys is down the road, and theres a car wash there too. Mmmm, yeaaaa.... his car has been through a lot and is pretty dirty.

We eat dinner and hit the sack, around midnight. Long day. Glad to be going to sleep.

No rain!