Pipestone, Badlands, and Rushmore

On Monday our first stop was Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota, which has been a quarry site for Native Americans for many, many years. Thankfully I was given a wheelchair upon entering the Visitor Center, and Paul was even able to push me along a 3/4 mile long trail. We would buy a wheelchair, but there isn't room in the van for one. As it is, I have to hold the crutches whenever we are in the van, and I take the boot apart and it sits on the floor in front of me in the van while I have my right foot up on the dashboard to help reduce the swelling in my foot and leg. On Tuesday I couldn't even wear the boot at all because the swelling was so bad, but on Wednesday I resumed wearing the boot when I was not in the van or a hotel room.

We spent most of the day in South Dakota. Paul and I really enjoyed the scenery while he was driving. Our second stop was the Badlands. We really, really would have liked to have had more time there. Ideally we would have liked to have had three full days in South Dakota. Because of how late we checked into the hotel the previous night because of my visit to the ER, we got a later start than planned on Monday morning. Because of that we decided to eliminate a visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial from our schedule. Three other places we would have liked to visit if we had more time would have been the Minuteman Missile National Park (near the Badlands), Jewel Cave, and Wind Cave (near Mount Rushmore). The kids had already earned the Minuteman Junior Ranger badge through the mail, but Paul would really have enjoyed going there in person. I contemplated four cave tours and finally settled on two, but we ended up cancelling our plans to see Timpanogos today which means Mammoth Cave will likely be our only cave tour on this trip. If we had to do only one, I'd definitely want it to be Mammoth. After dinner at Golden Corral, we went to Mount Rushmore. We were there during the lighting ceremony. Ideally, I would have liked to be there earlier in the day, but we were glad we got to see it. Paul went to great lengths to get me up there by wheelchair. He knew it was one of the top three things I most wanted to see on the vacation. 

Oliver mentioned multiple times that he wished he had run back and told me about the slippery place on the path, and Paul said he wished he had stayed there to warn me when I got there. They had yelled something up to Nadia and I, but we didn't hear what they said. It's amazing how something that takes a second to happen can greatly impact your life and the lives of other people in your family for days and weeks to come. I have only fractured a bone one other time in my life. When I was either 20 or 21 years old I fractured this same ankle. That time it was from slipping as I went down the stairs in my parent's home. I was a teacher at the time, and I had been dealing with a painful cyst on my tailbone. I assumed I had just twisted my ankle so I went to school as usual. Part way through the day I remarked to my students that my back was really hurting, and one student then told me that my ankle was also purple and very big. I had been standing on a broken ankle and teaching for hours! I promptly sat down and finished the school day teaching with my right foot propped up on a chair. Another teacher took me to a medical center afterwards so I could get an x-ray. I had to use a wheelchair for a few days until the swelling went down, and then I was in a cast. It was hard for me to give up my independence in terms of not being able to drive for weeks, but at that point I wasn't also responsible for the care of three children. I hope that I will be able to drive again much sooner this time around than I was about 27-28 years ago. 

We drove a total of 507 miles that day and visited three National Parks, which meant the kids earned three more Junior Ranger badges or patches. The hotel we stayed at didn't have a pool, but it didn't matter as we wouldn't have had time to use a pool anyhow. When we went to check into our rooms, we were told our rooms were on the second floor, and they didn't have an elevator. Thankfully they were able to switch one of our rooms to the first floor. I have enough trouble navigating 1-2 steps. There's no way I could do an entire flight of stairs at this point! Thankfully all the hotels since then have had elevators. Hopefully that will be the case for the rest of our trip!

We had another curveball to deal with on Monday in addition to my broken ankle. Tab, our dog sitter, called to say that Milo had been having a very bad case of separation anxiety from the first day we left on our trip. He had been crying a lot, vomiting a lot, and having many bad cases of diarrhea. Obviously he was miserable, and it was also very unpleasant for Tab and her boys to be cleaning up so many disgusting messes. I called the vet on Monday, and my friend, Cheri, also called Tab on Tuesday morning to discuss possible ideas. Tab said if the situation didn't improve soon they were going to take him to the vet and/or put him in a kennel. We were worried he would do even worse in a kennel. He loves their black lab (Maggie) and has two boys who are caring for him at their house. Considering we were in South Dakota when we found out, there wasn't much we could do about the situation aside from pray. We had already been praying for Milo every day. I asked other people to pray for him as well. It made me think we shouldn't have gotten a dog. Yes, this trip is longer than any will likely take in the future, but we often go away for 1-2 weeks and he was a mess right from the start. 

Photo credit: Nadia - taken in Michigan before my accident