The end of our vacation Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and home

We really enjoyed going to Dubuque, Iowa to see Aunt Janet and Uncle Paul. They were very good to us. Our children like to talk about how they let them eat ice cream at 11:00 pm after watching the fireworks. We went to church with them on Sunday. We thought about not going to their house since Aunt Janet was just getting out of the hospital. She called and talked us into coming. We were glad we did because we really enjoyed seeing them.

After Iowa, we drove across part of Wisconsin and into Minnesota. We went to see the St. Paul, Minnesota temple on Sunday afternoon. It was such a beautiful temple. We camped out at Lake Elmo State Park. It had an amazing pond that we loved playing in. It was 2 acres, it had a nice sandy beach and was not too deep. It was like a swimming pool, but sandy. I think the children would have spent the whole day there, but we went on to the Mall of America. When Rebecca was in 6th grade she really wanted to go to the Mall of America, but we didn't make it then. Now it wasn't so much of a big deal to her, but we were close that we decided to go. It was amazing everything they had in the Mall. Matthew, Emma and David rode the log chute in the Amusement park. It was neat to see all the things built from Legos in LegoLand.

We spent a second night in Minnesota. We camped at Alexandria. The campground had a shooting range. The mosquitoes were really bad that night. I was glad we had a trailer to sleep in so we didn't get eaten.

The next day we drove to North Dakota. We stopped and saw the Bismarck temple. It was a beautiful temple. While we were there we told our children the news that we were going to have another baby. It was a neat place to share that with them.

We stopped and camped our last night in Montana. The children and Neil went swimming. It was kind of cool so Joshua and I didn't get in.

While driving home we saw the Teddy Roosevelt State Park in Montana. I didn't even know there was such a place. It had some pretty landscapes, but we didn't stop to see it.

We were glad to finally get home after 13 days and 3400 miles. It was a bigger and longer vacation than we had ever tried before. We had a great time together and shared many good memories.