Day Five

Yesterday was quite the day--on all accounts. I thought that I had better fill you in as the others are all hard at work on their homework. We have a free day today (day six) before our evening performance at the Sheridan, Wyoming's WYO Theatre tonight.

On Thursday we woke up and had breakfast in Rapid City after that incredible performance the night before. After filling up for gas....Reed was the manly one today.... We headed for the Hills...stopping first at a place called BEAR COUNTRY where the animals were roaming fairly free through a 3 mile reserve. At one point we were surrounded by wolves....cool! Alissa took video, which we hope to get online. I think we sounded pretty silly, but you will feel like you are right in the van with us. That experience ended with a trip through Baby Land where all the babies of the various animals are housed and raised. It was a great experience and we had the most fun watching the baby bears rolling all over each other. A visit to the Cosmos exhibit deep in the forest came next. I stayed in the van for phone calls and then out in the wooded area outside to get some work done as the four actors tramped through the haunted, magical hills and came back with the news that Emily actually may be taller than Reed. We left to head for some place to eat when I realized that my camera was no longer in my pocket. The kids were great trying to look through everything to see if it had slipped out when I got into that tall van.....but to no avail. We retraced our tracks back to the Cosmos, with me crossing my fingers that the camera had been discovered by someone there and turned in. We turned into the Cosmos parking lot and saw the shiny red camera under a car. Reed ran out and pulled it out from under the vehicle, but we all knew that it was not good news as his gait slowed considerably as he investigated the camera. Surprisingly the glass was not broken, but the front side had suffered a fatal blow. Had there been grass and not gravel, the camera may have survived. I still am hoping to get the sad little thing to work.

We ate a Buffalo Buffet in Keystone and then headed for Mount Rushmore. We were listening to Karen, the Garmin Girl and she insisted that I needed to go back around to a turn off that was certainly not looking too obvious or promising. We "recalculated" and got back to that odd looking exit and found ourselves in the middle of a rutted out road in the middle of a forest. I am glad that this was not my first day of mega van driving as the skills I had been gaining the last four days all came into play and we were able to stay above the deep ruts through the winding forest.....John-Emmett said that it reminded him of Jurassic Park and Reed said that that was not very comforting as we all know how THAT turned out. After nearly 30 minutes we were through the forest...(there was no way to turn around once we started) we met civilization with a new found enthusiasm. We dumped Karen (she was from Australia) and went back to the curt and all business Carmen (the American Garmin Girl) . We decided that Carmen would have never had let us get so lost. Mount Rushmore was beautiful and I really missed my camera, but I borrowed Alissa's to take photos of the kids which we will get posted soon. We were hoping to get to the Mount Rushmore Caves, but we arrived there just as they were closing. We decided to head for Sheridan with the hope that we might stop and see Devil's Tower (I think that was the name). When we came to the exit, we took a quick vote and decided to head on to Sheridan as we had four hours to go. Alissa and I sat in the front talking college, Reed and Emily (despite what has been written...those two really do get along great) played pictionary and John-Emmett was talking on his cell. Eventually we all got on the same page and began an old Guhin family tradition of making up songs on the road. I warned them that the first time we tried it, it would probably sound gross....but it didn't! We spent the next couple hours coming up with new songs in a variety of different styles. It finally deteriorated when Reed started singing about butterflies and ginger hair and the rest of us couldn't continue without giggling. We arrived in Sheridan about 10 p.m. and dropped off our luggage in the rooms before setting out for Walmart to purchase a few things for the next day.

We are meeting at 4:10 p.m. on Friday to head for the Sheridan WYO Theatre to set up and do the show. Hopefully, alot of homework is being done right now!

Mrs. (Diana) Wooley