Here is the car all packed up- Hertz upgraded us to a Corolla...what what. Patrick making sure that June the bike is secure. 
Saying goodbye to the old block.
Our first stop was upstate New York. A little out of the way, but we thought it would be a great place to enjoy the fall leaves. This is Watkins Glen. It's by the finger lakes and is a nice hike to all sorts of waterfalls. It's also where they shot some of Last of the Mohicans. Pure beauty.
Is that Daniel Day Lewis behind that waterfall there? Nope, just patrick.
Next we went to Niagara Falls. At night they have a laser light show on the water.
Here we are in our slickers for the Maid of the Mist boat tour. Cold, wet and windy= struggling with our picture faces. But it was really awesome and they take you right up to the base of the falls. Once a little boy fell in the river and went over the falls and survived. He was rescued by the Maid of the Mist. Once a woman went over the falls in a barrel with her cat. She survived too.
Then we hit up Kirtland for some church history. We went to the temple and got to sing the Spirit of God inside the chapel where they did the dedication. It was awesome. We also went to old Kirtland to see where the prophet used to live (above the Newell K. Whitney store) and where he received a lot of revelations like the Word of Wisdom.
South Dakota could quite possible be the most random place on earth, but it was highly enjoyable. It takes forever to drive across and is basically just straight corn fields, so they have to make it seem exciting by advertising strange attractions on the highway for hundreds of miles, till you get so excited about it that you have to pull off and see the biggest drugstore in America! Take the Corn Palace for example, which is just a basketball court, but the whole outside of it is decorated with corn husks. Look closely. Now you've seen it- so don't ever go.
What's this? Oh just a giant gorilla playing piano in his hat and boots at a gas station (advertised as an original cowboy town). His name is Singing Sam. He doesn't sing or anything.
South Dakota does however have some wonderful things to offer. I give you Mount Rushmore.
I loved it. It's amazing when you start to think about the guys up there carving the faces in the early 1900s, basically dangling by a rope. And they came out looking so accurate.There's Crazy Horse in the distance. You can see his arm pointing out. He's not done yet, and they've been working on him for over 60 years.
And plenty of buffalo to spare. They get so close you can reach out and touch them, but that's probably not a good idea. 
We ended our trip with a couple of days in Yellowstone, but sadly all of those pictures are on Patrick's camera so that will have to be another post. All in all it was a great trip and we didn't have any problems. Anyone wanna drive across the South?
