Quick Successions: New Mexico Edition

We were gone on our trip on the 4th of July, but on the 5th we had barbecue chicken and this amazing stars and stripes pie I found in some stuff my mom sent me on Pinterest.  When we returned we also had a lot of errands to run. One of them was to pay Hannah's preschool tuition for the upcoming year. So we stopped by the Arts Center to do just that and Hannah saw an interactive X-wing exhibit.  We do live in the Midwest, so this is the time of the year for big storms. Here's another poor tree. I didn't witness its demise this time. Over the weekend Hannah and I got haircuts and went shopping. Then we went out to by boss' house in Topeka for a pool party. Hannah jumped in the 5 foot deep end before I could get my shorts and t-shirt off and get in with her. Of course, she started to panic and slosh in the water. Luckily another parent already in the pool pulled her out. Still fearless, she put on a life jacket and got right back in, but I was able to keep...

We usually don't venture too far from home unless it is to see family or go to an academic conference.  But sometime last year I realized that I had been to 40 of the 50 states and so I started steering myself towards the ones I had not yet been to. I knocked three off my list last year and this year I decided that since we were going to be in the midwest for the summer and even another year, I was going to tackle an out-of-the-way pair: North and South Dakota. So I found the best hotels at the best prices on the Internet and realized that following Interstate 29, I could get to Sioux Falls, SD and Fargo, ND, and then everything Dakota-ish in between. That left out Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills, but the point was to visit the state and I was closer to those places living in Utah, but I never went anywhere during the summer because I was always teaching classes and working in the migrant summer school program. Some other time, perhaps ... but here is our trip to the east Dakota...

You can learn a lot of things from the flowers. Especially in the month of June. The Powell Botanical Gardens are about an hour away from where we live. About a week ago, I found them on the Internet and decided to take a Friday off of work and head out to see stuff since I was done with my PhD. There were lots of pretty flowers. It was hot, but not awful outside and there were lots of shaded areas. My favorite spot was a place mostly enclosed with greenery where there was a rushing brook moving through. We took a picture on the bridge. Here is part of the brook. I also liked the waterfall at the end of the trail. As a bonus, a local paleontological artist had made about dozen life-life sculptures of dinosaurs that were set up around the gardens. Hannah really enjoyed these. Here we are in front of the tyrannosaurus rex. He is about to eat us, but we don't seem too concerned. I was much more scared of this baby brontosaurus. Look at that...