Trip to Montana

When we got back from Harvest in Saskatchewan it was just before Labour Day weekend and so we made the trip down to Sheridan, Montana to visit Jenny, Steve, Sam, Ellie and the rest of the Wood family. It's about a 700km drive which is so amazing and breathtaking!! It gets me so excited for driving through America in 2013!

Are we there yet??

When we arrived at the Wood's we were welcomed with open arms and I instantly felt at home in their gorgeous family house. The next day Steve treated James to a tour round the farm while Jenny, Sam and I tried to recover after a 24 hour tummy bug...great timing I know! Labour Day lunch Jenny's sons Bill and Jamie came round with their wives, Missy and Lacey and Bill and Missy's 3 gorgeous kids. It was such a great afternoon with amazing food and good catch ups. 

The next day we were all recovered from our tummy bugs so Sam (Jenny and Steve's son) took us touring around the farm on their awesome farm ranger. They have about 6 pet sheep which follow Sam around, pretty cool for me to see sheep so quiet, I'm used to them all fleeing as soon as I say boo! We popped into Bill and Missy's place along the way and saw some fainting goats (unfortunately no fainting to be spoken of on this day) then we continued up the hill to where the Wood's were harvesting Barley only to run into a rattle snake!!! Because of the risk to the harvesting team (who fortunately had labour day off) we had to dispose of the snake which Sam managed with the four wheeler and a plastic shovel. James, their pet Jack Russel and I waited safely in one of the harvesting trucks while Sam took care of the snake!

Sam looking after his pets

So much cuteness right there!

The fainting goats (watch a video of them on youtube if you haven't seen them!)

My hairy man x

Missy standing by Bill's chicken coop in progress!

Out on the farm

Spot the deer

James and Sam appreciating the breathtaking view

Another breathtaking view

Barley Harvester

The RattleSnake ssssssss.......

Said snake now no longer sssssss..........

After another delicious home cooked meal and relaxing sleep Steve took James and I out for a horse ride to appreciate the farm in a completely different way. He gave me one of the older quieter horses (thanks Steve) because James' horse was playing up quite a bit and me being quite inexperienced wouldn't have had a clue about what to do!! 

Unfortunately the trip was over well before I was ready to head back to work but we are super excited about visting again on our road trip around America in 2013!!

Farewell Montana

Farewell America!

Mount Rushmore and a Crazy Horse!

While we were over in Saskatchewan we had a few days of rain and so decided to take advantage of a couple of days off. Danielle, Chris, James and I headed off on a wee road trip to see Mount Rushmore seeing as we were so close to the American border (as you can see below).

The drive through North Dakota was pretty uneventful (tick - don't need to do that drive again!) But once we got to South Dakota things started picking up. We drove through the badlands which were pretty awesome, I didn't manage to get any great photos so I've stolen one from google to show you how cool it looked.
                             

We stopped off at Belle Fourche on the way through as Chris was keen to check out the old wild west town, and boy are we glad we did. We met a war veteran who (besides the fact he had wet himself because of how drunk he was) he also told us about how he had ripped some guys heart out to save his fellow American soldiers and then he proceeded to give Chris his veterans jacket. After we asked what they did to fill in their time in the town a lovely woman told us that they 'hunt and they f**k' then she tried to tell us how she could teach us a few tricks...we quickly left that bar and I can't emphasize how quickly that was and headed on our way.

Chris is Belle Fourche

After spending the night in Rapid City we set off in the morning to check out the four famous men. We were told that we had to make a stop at Crazy Horse, a memorial and eventually a university site to honor the culture, tradition and living heritage of North American Indians. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was commissioned to commence the memorial in 1948 and the project is still far from completion. You can read more about the project at http://crazyhorsememorial.org/ however to give you an idea of the size, the four Mount Rushmore heads fit into the size of crazy's horse alone!!

Danielle, Chris, James and I in front of Crazy Horse memorial

A 1/34th size carving of Crazy Horse

What the mountain will look like once it's completed

Crazy Horse Up Close

Chris, Danielle and I

 After Crazy Horse we headed to Mount Rushmore to see the those four famous faces. I think I would recommend to visit Rushmore then Crazy Horse just because Crazy Horse is so big and it made Mt Rushmore seem kinda small! however it was still super impressive and we got some pretty fantastic snaps of the afternoon.

Danielle giving Chris a lift up to Mount Rushmore!

Danielle...I mean Chris pondering life in front of the 4 wise men

Danielle, Chris, James and me

Mount Rushmore!

Me and my bearded man

That night we stayed in Deadwood, the town where the infamous Wild Bill Hickok was killed. We watched the local town play where Wild Bill's murderer Jack McCall was put on trial and sentenced to death. Earlier we also saw the 'shooting' of Wild Bill on the main street of town, it was quite cool how all the tourists got involved and walked Jack down to the courthouse. So glad we made the effort to see Mt Rushmore and lucky we got to see crazy horse cos we didn't even know about it but if you get the chance, totally worth it!