Face to face with a Bear

As hard as we tried, we couldn't resist taking the trip to Bear Country USA. They have the largest (captive) population of black bears in the world, but that wasn't what drew us in. We read reviews hoping that we would find nothing overly impressive to draw us into yet another animal venue, but what we read drove us right to their front gates. Many reviewers spoke of how close the bears came to the cars and everyone raved about the bear cubs in Babyland.

The safari started out as many of the others that we have seen. Here are a few pictures and a video we took en route to the bears. 

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Soon enough, we came across our first close encounter. We weren't even in the actual bear section yet!!

Apparently the black bears and the grizzly bears get along pretty well. Here they are playing in the water together. 

Sometimes they get tired and take naps on top of their bear caves.

 I would have gotten a better picture, but he came so close that Daniel made me roll up the window. Sigh. He was so cute! I just wanted to pet him! 

Here's a video of our bear encounters:

We were already impressed with our bear encounters and couldn't wait to see what was in store for us in Babyland. Even as you approach the entrance, there are cute benches and signs. 

Then the real fun starts! The first thing we saw was a baby bobcat. 

When we found the baby cubs, it was time for their breakfast so they were all crowded around their feeding bin. 

 As they finished eating, they didn't have parents around to make sure they politely waited for the others to finish and they began to wander off on their own. 

 It didn't take long before it was playtime. They began wrestling with one another. 

They were so playful that they didn't discriminate whether they were wrestling one another, the employee sent in to pick up after them, or even the shovel he left laying on the ground briefly!

 Some of the adventurous ones even climbed the trees!!

All of this playtime was clearly exhausting. 

Eventually, Daniel had to drag me out of Babyland so we could continue our trip. We headed back to the motel to get the dogs and braced ourselves for the 7 hour drive to Omaha. This time the drive was long enough that both dogs stuck their heads in the front with us... and even attempted to come sit on my lap here or there!!!

Daniel and George were getting sooooooo tired!

The dogs were being really good on the drive so we stopped at McDonald's to give them their favorite treat:

Luckily, we made it to Omaha while it was still light out. We met some friends from Florida in downtown for dinner and they showed us around the town. We completely forgot to take pictures. Oops. Neither of us had ever been to Omaha before and we were both surprised to find a very nice downtown area. The housing is VERY affordable and there are lots of shops, restaurants, and apparently one of the top zoos in the country. We'll have to go back to check that one out.

Again, I went to get ready for bed and found that they hadn't left any room for me!!

We woke up the next morning eager to get to Chicago for the 4th of July fireworks, but not before enjoying our best (and only?) breakfast of the trip. The Farmhouse Cafe had huge freshly made cinnamon rolls with lots of icing. No, we didn't order one for breakfast... it came with the meal we ordered!! Sinful! The portions were so huge we didn't come close to finishing them and then we were both feeling uncomfortably full for the first several hours of our drive. Why did we do that to ourselves? It was just soooooo delicious!!

We got to the suburbs of Chicago around 8pm. We grabbed a quick dinner at Portillos/Barnelli's before heading over to watch the fireworks. The golf course was jammed pack and we quickly realized that finding a parking space and making it to the park in time would be impossible. We settled on finding a spot to watch from the car. Within about 30 seconds, we saw a few people with chairs in their driveways. The first firework lit the sky. 

We had found the perfect place to view the fireworks without being in a crowd. There was a large grassy courtyard in the middle of a little neighborhood. All the neighbors were out in the street watching the fireworks. We pulled the car over to an empty spot and stood in the streets and watched an excellent display. We decided it had to be an excellent display because we thought they were doing the finale 2 or 3 times before they did the actual finale! 

                               

We were all exhausted from the long drive and decided to head back to the motel for a good nights sleep before exploring the city. Stay tuned for our Chicago adventures. 

A rocky day: Watch out for the prairie dogs!!

We awoke in Lovell, Wyoming early with a sense of urgency to get to Rapid City, South Dakota so we would have time to do everything we wanted.

It was a drive with gorgeous views at every turn.

Even George stopped whining and relaxed for most of the ride. 

Sometimes he insisted on checking out the views with us up front!

We drove up to an elevation of about 9000 ft as we went through the beautiful Bighorn National Forest.

We even stopped on the side of the road when we spotted some snow, so we could introduce George and Jane to it for the very first time. They didn't really seem to think anything of it.

After we checked in the motel in Rapid City, we wanted to head to Wind Cave National Park, the world's 6th largest cave, in order to make the last tour at 6:00pm. There was only one problem. Our GPS let us know it was an hour and a half away and that we would be arriving after 6pm. We were off to race against the clock once again. (I can neither confirm or deny that any speeding laws were or were not observed).

We were making good time, in a safe manner of course, when the GPS lead us onto a dirt and gravel road. We followed it until we we reached the middle of a prairie field and it let us know that we had arrived. Something didn't seem quite right. The cave was no where in site. We called the Park and told the ranger who answered that we were on a dirt road in the park, and he quickly replied,"I don't mean to be rude, but you went the wrong way. You're in the back of the park."  He asked me how many miles I had traveled and told him I wasn't sure but that there was a herd of bison directly to my left if that was any help. It wasn't. Apparently the bison travel quite a bit. He gave me directions and sounded doubtful that we could make the tour on time.

We continued driving down this dirt road in the middle of prairie lands until we saw some small creatures in the middle of the road. Then there were more. They were everywhere. They looked like meerkats but we later found out that they were prairie dogs. They were all over the road, but they all had the sense to move out of the way to let us pass. One of them would be standing up at each colony keeping watch just like the meerkats. It was a rather unique experience to drive right through what seemed like multiple colonies of them, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of our day.

We made it to the ticket booth with two minutes to spare and a cool experience to remember.

This is the natural entrance to the Wind Cave:

 Here is our tour guide, Ranger Adam, showing us why it is called the Wind Cave:

We thought the cave was awesome. We descended down the narrow paths and found beautiful formations, large cavernous rooms, and tight, narrow passages. At one point all the lights were cut off (intentionally) and we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces.

The Wind Cave is most well known for it's boxwork formations. It has 95% of the world's boxwork formations and no other cave in the world has the quality and quantity of boxwork as the Wind Cave does. Here are some pictures of this unique formation:

Overall it was a very cool experience that left us with the feeling of wanting to explore more caves.

Next, we drove to Mt. Rushmore to view in person what we had seen in so many pictures and movies.

The sculptures look so much better in person. The scale and features are truly impressive. We took a walk along the presidential trail to get some different views:

The trail was also a great vantage point to get this view of sunset over the Black Hills:

On that note, we went to eat dinner and get a good night's sleep for tomorrow's adventure.