The Last Leg, Independence Rock.

the Last leg of our journey took us through independence rock and martins cove, we got to climb all over it and I got to take pictures.

Independence,

A Really, Really, big rock.

Devils Gate

And there you have it, our 10 day vacation, in a nutshell. I hope y'all appreciate the effort it took to post all the photos, took me well over 4 hours to type and post every photo, maybe I'm glad I didn't try to post all of the photos I took...

Anyways, The Trip was awesome, an amazing way to start the summer before I leave on a mission, a great reminder of exactly how grand life really is, and I will close this series of posts the same way I annoyed my family the entire vacation by saying: "isn't life a funny thing?"

Animals and Plants

Throughout our Trip we saw many different animals and plants, I decided to take pictures of them, and this is where i'm posting them, have fun looking at them.

Mount Rushmore

After Jewel Cave we went to see Mount Rushmore, I had left my camera charging at the hotel and had forgotten to bring it, so pictures will be forthcoming once I get ahold of my Dad's camera, but it was awesome, an amazing feat of human creation.

Jewel Cave

After Touring the bad lands we went to Jewel Cave, If you've been to Timpanogous, you haven't seen anything compared to this cave, Its HUGE, instead of hiking up a huge trail, you drive to the visitors center, then descend 720 feet to where they start the tour, by elevator. They've predicted that the cave is over 1000 miles long, the professional spelunkers have only mapped out 150 of those miles, and I only toured .5 of that, either way, I took pictures until my cameras battery died.

here are my 10 favorites.

I had the privilege to witness this very rare cave formation,

its called "the Love Sponge",

no idea why...

The Bad Lands

Here, I took tons of photos, and I mean tons, probably over 150. I promised myself I would limit myself to 10 per post about this vacation, so I'm going to show my ten favorites. needless to say though, South Dakota is Beautiful.

ha ha, I stole Nathans Color

That shadow is 30 miles away

Navoo

One of the longest stays on our road trip, the town of Navoo holds much to do in the area of church history, but very little when it comes to cell-phone reception, which didn't help because one of my best friends was getting his mission call while were were here and I couldn't even get a signal long enough to call and say congrats. Thats in the past now though, He's going to Montana on Sept 21st, Congratulations Tysum.

While there was a lot to do, I didn't take many pictures, most of what we did was attend plays and other performances provided by the missionaries called to serve there. They were all highly entertaining and I enjoyed myself a lot. I took video of a few of their skits, (although I later reasoned that I probably wasn't supposed too...), I'm not going to post the videos in order to maintain the privacy of the performers, just take my word for it, they were hilarious.

A Wagons Wrights workshop,

This is where a lot of the wagons for moving west were made.

We decided that this was only a replica of the masonry that is on the side of the Navoo Temple,

It was on the front porch of a small diner where we ate lunch one day.

The Mississippi River,

can you imagine crossing this river in the middle of November?

I wouldn't want to.

Worlds of Fun, The first theme park I actually enjoy.

After our first round of History, we stayed in a cabin just on the outskirts of a amusement park called "Worlds of Fun/Oceans of Fun", needless to say, I didn't take pictures at the Oceans of Fun Water Park, The cabin was nice, the lack of crowds was better. we got to go on as many rides as we wanted, with virtually no line, all day, In the morning we hit the roller-coasters, in the afternoon, the watersides, For the first time in years, I didn't get bored at an amusement park.

This is the Cabin we stayed at.

You could see this roller coaster from our cabin, 

thats how close we were,

Bumper carts were awesome, 

weren't they Nathan?

The Patriot, Best Coaster, EVER!

Hehehe.... 

Probably the Smartest frog i've ever seen, all those black dots are bugs...

they were really noisy at night though.

Oxy-Mormon: Liberty Jail, Among other things.

Our next stop, a surprisingly short distance from Adom-ondi-ahmon was really a small series of stops, we went to Liberty Jail (an oxy-moron used to hold Mormons, hence the pun in the title), Carthage Jail, and A Visiting center set up in the area that more or less encompassed all three stops. We learned about what took place at both jails and about the history of the Latter Day Saints who had lived in that area. I took pictures of a few key things I thought work documenting.

This is where the cornerstones for a temple had been laid,

each corner represented a different area of the Priesthood

Liberty Jail,

what it would have looked like 

while Joseph Smith was there.

A picture taken through the hole made by the bullet that shot Hyrum,

to the Window that Joseph fell out of,

Carthage Jail.

The Community of Christ Temple

Temple Site, 

We don't own the land yet,

but eventually a grand temple will be built here.

Someone obviously didn't like this sign...

The Signs not 100% accurate, 

or even placed there by the church it was trying to describe,

but that doesn't merit trying to chop it down.