The boys and I had an amazing weekend in Rapid City. We got back on Monday and the whole trip was wonderful. Our main goal was to attend a 3 day outdoor Christian concert, with 20 bands, about 10 of them were fairly familiar to us. A friend from North Dakota met us over there and just a great time. The kind of vacation where you feel like you were gone 2 weeks, even though it was only 5 days.

I am at a place in my life where I am processing a lot of personal stuff, spending lots of time reading, writing in my journal, praying and sorting through stuff. God knew that I needed this weekend. So much floating around in my head, I was not even able to get it all in my journal. Needless to say, 2016 festival is on our list for next year.

There were several local things we wanted to do. We visited the Dinosaur Park on Thursday afternoon. They had numerous life size statues that were on top of hill, overlooking the city.

After that we headed to a local park.  I am always amazed at the parks in other cities, with the walking/biking trails, trees, green space, play grounds, etc.  (I guess I feel our town lacks in that).
A few great climbing trees.  The boys also rode their bikes around to burn off some of the energy from being in the car for 8 hours.

Seems like every time I pull out the camera he wants to stick out his tongue or close his eyes...I will take the latter.

Later that evening there was a festival downtown.  Was very surprised how many people there were.  Lots of vendors, inflatable, etc.  We were told it is an every Thursday night thing, but cannot imagine that being the case, knowing how long it had to take to set up and tear down.  The band playing in this park was really good.

I did not realize that Rapid City is known at the Presidents' City ~ I guess Mount Rushmore should have been a clue. Downtown, they have statues on each corner of all presidents. The statues are not quite life size. I would have liked to have gone back downtown because it was so busy on Thursday night I could not get a good picture or leisurely stroll through looking at the statues.

I will sort through the rest of the pictures later today.  Off to therapy!