Goodbye to the Ranch

We said goodbye to the Cobb Ranch for the summer early this morning and headed towards Hot Springs, SD.
It was eerily silent in the truck as the boys road with Kiley’s folks, who went with us for this last little trip. Today is their 42nd Wedding Anniversary and they wanted to spend it with us. At least that’s what they said, we know that they were more interested in spending it with their grandsons. ☺
Once in Hot Springs, we stopped at the Wooly Mammoth Dig site. All of us thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Ian is enamored with anything dinosaur these days, so to see thousands of Mammoth bones actually being dug up while we watched was almost more than he could handle. Brendon, although somewhat less patient, is a budding history buff, so he got caught up in it as well.
Once our time at the dig was done, Tom decided we needed a picnic lunch. He picked the food…it was what he called “PaPa food” for lunch. We had pop (that’s the real word for Soda), cheetos, cheese puffs, chips, and about every other kind of junk food he could find at the store. He found a little picnic spot by a water fall where we gorged ourselves on the most unhealthy meal all summer. ☺
From there, we went on to Rapid City and set up the trailer at our summer’s favorite campground again (we went back for one night today for the start of the trip home). The moment the trailer was set up, there was a flash of lighting, a roll of thunder and someone turned on the fire hose. We sat in the trailer for the next hour as water poured, and I mean POURED down so loud we could hardly hear ourselves. We laughed the time away playing a game of SWAP.
From there, we took Tom and Karen out for their anniversary to Red Lobster, one of their favorite restaurants. We shopped for a couple birthday presents for extended family and then headed back to roast s’mores over the campfire. With my new method of starting a fire with a road flare the rain didn’t matter.
We found at Cost Plus World Market, a spreadable Chocolate Caramel. Spread that stuff on a graham cracker, add roasted Marshmallow and you have one incredible fat producing evening snack…