Finishing Our August Bucket List

We've had a few quiet weekends and were able to have lots of family fun:

Draw with Chalk

Play Wiffleball

Sail paper boats:

Lighthouse Arcade/August 12th Anniversary

The city all but shut down for the weekend of August 10-12, the anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Despite the fact that all of the downtown streets were closed and the police were everywhere, several downtown businesses remained open. Benji was in gamemaking camp that week and Friday they had their gallery walk for parents (an arcade, since they had been making games). Since we planned to go to services at CBI that evening, we decided to also have dinner downtown to support the local business:

This is the game Benji and his partner designed

Tyler and Benji

It was a lovely Friday dinner

Services were a bit of a surprise. Rabbi Tom had decided to invite the whole local community to attend, and sooo many people did. Here are a lot of the local clergy, singing the final song with the rabbis

Gearhardt Chocolate Open House

Just a fun little Saturday adventure. The open house was surprisingly cool, and we got to make our own truffles:

BLAST!

Finishing out what was a very busy July, Abby left the Sunday after we got back for a residential camp at UVA. Abby applied for this camp - Building Leaders in Applied Science and Technology (BLAST) - earlier in the year and was accepted, along with her friend Elisabeth. They were the only 2 Charlottesville kids in the camp, which has students from all over Virginia (Abby's roommate was from Fredericksburg and Elisabeth's roommate was from Northern Virginia). The camp was sponsored by the space consortium and was free for accepted students. They did an amazing job and packed a lot into 3 days of programs:

Dropping Abby off at the UVA dorms -- here she is with Elisabeth and Elisabeth's roommate Ria. Abby's roommate Deanya is unpacking behind them

All the girls gathered ahead of their first activity (the camp was half girls and half boys)

The opening talk was given by an astronaut with 950 hours of space time

Group shot with the astronaut

Ready for some science demonstrations (the camp activities went until at least 10pm each night)

Day 1: Using the mass spectrometer

Girls at work

Using electrophorisis to extract dye

Day 2: designing their water haulers

Abby came home on Wednesday, tired but exhilarated.

Belated Happy Birthday to Kevin

We did not have much chance to celebrate on the trip, so we had pop-pop's pasta and a Ben and Jerry's cake the Saturday we got back. (Which was exactly a month ago. Luckily, it's been a quiet month so it should not take too long to get the blog caught up):

End of the Swim Season

We timed our trip to get back to Charlottesville for Benji to swim in the Champs meet that marks the end of the summer swim season. We ended up arriving much later than planned on Wednesday night, but Benji still got up in time to have one last regular team practice on Thursday morning (and pick up his time improvement ribbons):

Benji swam three races on Saturday morning at UVA - 50 free, 50 back and 50 breast:

Free

Breast

His name in lights

Backstroke

With Abby, back in the CITY tent

On the Tuesday after the meet, we had the end of year banquet. This is the first year we have been in town to attend it since 2015 and Benji was glad to receive his trophy:

And that's our 9th swim season done!

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

In the three weeks we have been back from vacation, we have been enjoying the end of summer and the quiet. We did not have much planned but have been trying to engage in some of our favorite summer activities that we missed out on earlier in the summer. (This set of pictures is actually from earlier in the summer -- taken the weekend before we left from Utah):

The Great Western Road Trip 2018: Black Hills/Mt. Rushmore (and that's a wrap!)

On Tuesday, the last full day of our trip, we headed back towards the Black Hills. We did not have any clear agenda, other than to see Mount Rushmore, so we decided to just decide what to see as we went. After looking at some reviews, we decided on Wind Cave National Park as our first stop:

We took the Natural Entrance tour, which went down to the middle levels of the cave

Popcorn, which is a popular cave feature

This is boxwork, which is what wind cave is known for. The guide said that 90% of the boxwork in the US is in Wind Cave

More boxwork

 After Wind Cave, we started heading slowly towards Keystone, but took the route that led us through the Custer State Park Wilderness drive, where we saw many more bison and antelopes (and some prairie dogs):

Just as we got off the scenic road, we found our first overlook of Mount Rushmore

We got to Keystone in time to check in to our hotel and look around the town a little, and then headed to Mount Rushmore for the evening:

At the end of the evening, we stayed for the ranger program, followed by the flag retreat (in which all veterans were invited to participate) and the illumination of the statue. It is washed out in this picture, but the ceremony was quite lovely:

We got back to the hotel late and headed straight to bed, because Kevin and Abby were dropping Benji and I at the Rapid City airport first thing Wednesday morning. And thus ends the Great Western Trip.