Holy Posting Batman!

mmm... Oberon.

what? oh. Blog.

Speaking of Batman, >ahem<, just go and see it. trust me. Don't take your kids, go yourself and enjoy it. Fan-tastic, exciting, horrifying, pure entertainment. Give them your $9.50. In other, probably more 'real' or 'important' stuff, we managed a quick visit to the mitten two weekends ago to see Greg and Christina finally tie that knot off around Greg's neck. (wedding weekend pictures right over here) Splitting a room with the Bishops (Brian's take on the weekend can be found here) Liz and I enjoyed the big fat Armenian wedding, flush with some new dances, an incredibly ornate service and chapel and open bar with great aplomb. I won't lie, what with the extensive detail that had to be paid to everything, the amount of guests and all of the hullabaloo, i was expecting a train wreck of a weekend that was not going to be enjoyable at all.

BUT, i was very pleasantly surprised. The wedding was successful, (in that, they are indeed legally married, my only measure for a successful wedding) and i found pleased as punch to be able to stand up and represent Greg at that (giant) altar.


I took off from the wedding on Sunday afternoon, and liz stuck around the mitten for the remainder of the week, spending time with her side of the inlaws over at Hoffmaster State Park on Michigan's West Coast. A decent amount of pestering in the comments may help in getting her to enter her own thome on her time back home over at her site, or maybe i should just begin the initiative of pestering for her to simply start writing here. What say you, internets?

Getting home Thursday night, and then leaving on Friday afternoon, we accompanied our neighbors Matt & Anne on a trip up to the black hills in SD, a five hour drive Northward. Matt is an ex-coworker of mine from my LT days up at FE Warren, and he actually just got back last week from a 6 month stint in the Iraq. Matt actually used to live in Rapid City, which is one of the reasons we had decided to make the trip.

We managed to find the second to last camping spot on Sheridan Lake, just south of town and North of the monument. Friday night dinner (because what is more important than food details) was "hobo burgers", which was blue cheese ground beef with onions, peppers wrapped in tin foil and thrown into the fire for 12 minutes. Donning gloves, retrieve the sizzling goodness and pour into a hotdog bun. mmm.

The morning saw eggs and bacon, and then we were off to see Mt Rushmore. I had personally been there once before, during my first roadtrip across the country with my brother Matt. We rolled into the monument five years ago and balked at the cost to park and see the stupid thing. We did manage to discover the singular loophole of Rushmore, though: once you get to the window, the only way to get out of the monument is to drive through the whole thing, which they will let you do for free. You can also kind of see it from the drive. You can also send your little brother running up the pedestrian walkway, camera in hand, to snap a few pictures and then run back to your idling Buick and take off. Eat it, Washington!

So, this plan was not what we went with this weekend, though. go figure. We did discover the one limiting factor of the place, though: there isn't much to do. I have to give the park service credit, they really did try and stretch the experience out as much as possible, with a decent sized museum, two movies to watch about the thing, and even a half mile trail to walk. That said, Rushmore is a 3 hour event all told, so we soon found ourselves in the Keystone city park having a picnic lunch.

From there we went into Rapid City to see the sites, Matt's old house, and Matt's old comic shop. (the most important stop of the weekend.) We also met another Civil Engineer that Matt had been deployed with who is stationed up at Ellsworth. We had dinner with him and a few other LTs, and made it back to the campsite for some requisite smores and bedtime.

Sunday saw some blueberry pamcakes, the packing up of camp, and setting southward to visit the Wind Cave National Park. We got the last four tour tickets for the next tour of the caves (sensing a theme for the weekend?) and spent the next hour and a half 200 foot below the earth's surface. The cave apparently holds more than %85 of all of the worlds Boxwork formations, which is a type of cave rock formation that shows up in very specific conditions instead of stalagtites. (not mites. tites. not that they had either.) We went a little more than a mile through narrow passageways and huge rooms, all dramatically lit for the best effect. I've never been spelunking before, and it was a really neat experience. I totally endorse checking out the Wind Cave if you're in the area.

Ok, so, i think that brings us back up to speed. right? no complaints? good. All the shots from South Dakoter are over here....