Last week the children were on Spring Break with a week away from the classroom, so we took off for some great family-memory-building time in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  We found our favorite campsite right on the banks of a beautiful trickling mountain stream, and set up a tent and moved into our little cabin. 

The weather was from 35 -65 F each day and we had a blast.  The high mountain lakes were all frozen over, and could still bear the weight of a whole bunch of children, all at once!  (see danger-photo below). 

No danger, as we could see clearly the white, thick ice, and the areas where the ice was thinning and turning blue then melting through...and even if they went through, they were in shallow water so they could stand in the frosty mush if worse came to worse.

While there we also found a few bison ("Tatanka"), antelope, burros, turkey, mule and white-tail deer and elk.  My boys loved playing Tatanka as if they were on the movie set with Kevin Costner for "Dances With Wolves".  The bull bison was in the wild but far enough away so there was no danger to the boys to do a little dance for the camera (see photo below).

Tons of great photos and memories including a little time at Mount Rushmore to remember some of America's greatest presidents, not one of whom (to my ever politically-watchful eye)  was of the current administrations' political party (Jefferson was an Old Republican, then known as a Democrat-Republican before that party split 30 years later into our two major parties today). 

Sure wish we could get Ron Reagan up there with Teddy, Abe, TJ and GW...but they say the rock remaining won't hold anymore carving.  But if there ever was a Great One of our generation, it was the man who, lampooned by the press as a "bumbling actor idiot",  alone built the Maggie Thatcher (Iron Lady) dynamic duo and defeated the Red Scare, the Warsaw Pact, the USSR in all its terrible and greatly feared bluster to "crush the world with communism", to the utter dismay and horror of America's leftest media moguls.  

The greatest of generals is he who defeats his enemy without firing a single shot.  Ronald Reagan was that kind of superstar and always up there with the other four great ones in my mind's eye.  It is where he will always be for me.

Fun to see these giants of our American Dream dominating the landscape as they dominated the political landscape of their own days, and helped to make America the land that I love to this day.

If only we can get more like them every 30-40 years.

So a few last photos to wrap up the trip and then back to work until the next family vacation with a little water-skiing this summer!