Badgers are Adorable, but Don't Play with Them, Man. (Part 7)

So, Yellowstone National Park is absolutely gorgeous.  There's so many different parts and types of wildlife and things there it's ridiculous.  Sadly we didn't camp out there, but we did stay in a little town just outside of Yellowstone...close enough, right?

The first day in Yellowstone we went horseback riding again:

(My horse, Frank and dad's horse, Boomer)

I hate Western saddles.  I absolutely despise them with a consuming passion that burns forever deep in  my soul. They're uncomfortable, and my thighs were bruised for a couple days to prove it.

We went white water rafting afterward, and there will be pictures of that up as soon as we can get them up on a computer (they were professionally taken since we couldn't take any, and they're all on a CD....which we can't put into this NetBook)

Driving through the park, we saw the Mammoth Hot Springs:

...and some Elk:

...and Bison:

Lots of Elk and Bison. Of course we also saw Old Faithful, which my dad has a video of on his blog (go read it, it's probably more entertaining than mine is...more information, too)

We also saw a badger, which neither of us has ever seen before:

Yeah, I thought he was cute too.  When we were no longer in Yellowstone, we saw some moosen in the woodsen (if you don't understand the reference, go listen to this)

While we were in the middle of another National Forest, we came across a mess of cows in the middle of the road because it was an open range, or no fences.  All of the cows moved as we approached, except for this one:

Needless to say, we went around him.

We then drove through a canyon, which had waterfalls and signs pointing to things of rock saying just how many hundreds of millions of years old said rock was, along with signs pointing to things such as dinosaur footprints....which my dad decided wasn't amazingly awesome enough to stop for...needless to say, I protested.  A lot.

On our way to Grand Forks, ND we stopped in Rapid City, SD so I could see Mount Rushmore:

Pretty cool place, I gotta admit.  I'm just glad I got to see it before a nose fell off or something.  The rest of the drive to Grand Forks, ND was rather uneventful, and filled with nothing but fields and fields of plains of vegetation.  Omnomnom? No. I didn't get to nom on any of it...sad day.

Yesterday and today we visited my dads family, his grandmother, aunt/uncle/cousins etc., and I learned he did some interesting (stupid) stuff when he was a kid...and that his grandfather was incredibly patient.  I'm just saying.

Then we went to Lake Itasca, which (for those unedumacated people) is the headwaters of the Mississippi river:

So now we're in Minneapolis, and I'm going to the Mall of America tomorrow, which my dad thinks will only take 2 hours...silly man.

Sadly, this will probably be my lost post of the trip until I get home, as most of the rest of it is really just driving, with a couple stops.

Yay Mall of America!! (and shoes, simply for Becca's happiness)

-Panda:)