Gus' Great Adventures

Wyoming Wildlife.

 Really.  These are wild cattle.

Seriously.

Ok, not really, but there really are wild mustangs in Wyoming.  A whole herd of them.

Hehehe.



I drove to Rapid City, South Dakota for my little cousin's wedding and to see family.  My mom came from Iowa with the oldest monster, Gus.  We had a pretty fabulous weekend!

 Mom, Gus and I stayed in a hotel in Deadwood the night before the wedding.  Gus and I were up at 6 am so we snuck down to the continental breakfast.  We feasted on waffles, oatmeal, fruit, eggs, and orange juice.  And coffee.

I fed an eight year old coffee.  I'm a responsible adult like that.  It was decaf.

We then wandered our happy little selves to the pool.

I gave the kid some quarters to dive for.  He threw them in the hot tub, realized the water was too hot to put his face in to reach the quarters, and proceeded to wrap a towel around his head and face to go after them.

He is so strange.

Then he spent a good fifteen minutes throwing the towel in the pool, rescuing the towel, performing CPR on the towel, and doing the whole thing over again.

Towel CPR is pretty entertaining to watch.


Saturday was spent enjoying wedding festivities, but Sunday was all about the tourism.

 Gus loved Bear Country.  Mom loved Bear Country.  I loved Bear Country.

We saw bears.  So unexpected, eh?

Gus had his Nintendo DS to take pictures with...pretty sure he took a total of 4,564 pictures on Sunday.

 We also ventured on over to Reptile Gardens.  I haven't been there since I was a wee one, and it was still as awesome as I remember!  Still took every ounce of willpower I have to not catch the lizards and play with them.

Love me some reptiles, yo.

We went to all three shows - Gator, Snake and Bird.

 We also waited after every show to do all the fun animal petting stuff.

 Gator petting.

 Bird dollar feeding.

Snake touching.

Good stuff.  Except we didn't do any hand washing, now that I think about it.  Gross.  I'm a little sick to my stomach thinking about that.

Maybe it's salmonella.

 The big rainforest dome was awesome.

 And of course Gus found another snake to hang out with.

 We also found one to eat him.  Unfortunately, the Big Guy had just been fed and wasn't interested.  We settled for a picture.

 So back in the day when we went to Reptile Gardens, we got to ride the tortoise.  We have pictures.  I was all excited to ride the tortoise again for a 20-something-year-later picture.

No tortoise riding allowed.  Apparently, kids these days think it's okay to kick and hit the tortoises.  Some kids ruin all the fun for everyone.

Bummer.

 All in all, we had a fabulous day!


But.  I was missing Wilberforce.  So after our fun filled day, I took off for the wonderful world of Colorado.

I don't care what anyone says, Wyoming is beautiful.  God's Country.

 I followed this storm for half of my trip...

...then was chased by it for the other half.  It was prettiness.

The End.