I'm going to drop some hints for visiting Universal here, for any of you who are planning on doing it in the future.

• Stay in one of the onside hotels with a shuttle boat to CityWalk. Your hotel may offer early entry to Islands of Adventure, if you're willing to get up early, wait around with a crowd of people until the gates open, stand in line behind the one family that has misplaced their tickets, and then try to run faster than everyone else to get in line for Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure (which is where everyone is headed to, and which you will wait at least an hour for later in the day because it doesn't take Express Pass, if it is even operating, which it wasn't all morning on our first day). Or, just mosey into the park whenever you get up. You weren't going to get on that ride anyway.
• Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are the least crowded days to visit (at least in September, when we were there).
• Get the Express Pass. Just do it. Don't think about the cost. Life is too short to wait an hour or more in line for a ride
  
• For rides that don't take Express Pass, use the single rider line if the regular line is too long. Note that the single rider line often bypasses the fun stuff that entertains people waiting in the regular line.
  
• Eat at Finnegan's in the Universal Studios park. Bruce said the Irish stew was fantastic. I had an incredible pork chop.
• We also ate at Cowfish in Universal Citywalk . . . twice. Well, three times if you count the time we sat at the outside bar and shared a boozy chocolate milkshake.
• If you can't get a restaurant reservation, you can usually find seats at the bar and order food there.

Volcano Bay Waterpark:

• You can bring towels from your hotel room. Just remember to bring them back. Towel rental at the park is $7 a day.
  
• Rent a little tent thingy (reserved seating area to the right as you enter the park). It's a big sun shade over two loungers, with a lock box between them. I fit my backpack into the lockbox and didn't have to pay extra for a less-convenient locker many steps away. But make sure you specify one that is in a shady spot, because they face west and the sun will come in anyway. The reserved seats come with a wait person to bring the food and drinks you order on the Universal phone app.
• Or if you're independently wealthy, rent a cabana. But I think you have to reserve these by phone in advance.
• Be sure to take the shortcut through the volcano and talk to Vol, the volcano spirit.

No more travels until late November, unless a spectacular deal comes up before then.

It's actually Thursday as I write this. We spent the day at the theme parks again, catching up on some things we missed and revisiting some of the rides we enjoyed earlier in the week. We purposely did not go on the water rides again, after getting soaked on Tuesday

There are two parks that make up Universal Studios Florida: The original Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Yesterday we got early entry to Islands of Adventure but weren't able to get on the very popular Hagrid's Motorbike ride in the Harry Potter area, because it was out of service. We did a few of the other Harry Potter rides and then took the Hogwarts Express to the other park.

Toaday we stayed on the Islands of Adventure side, where all the "wet" rides are, and we got soaked. It took all day to even semi-dry out. Thank goodness it was sunny and 90 degrees, although we couldn't have gotten any wetter if it had rained.
And I remembered the Talking Fountain (third photo) from many years ago when we were here. Everyone was ignoring it, but I started talking to it and we had a nice conversation. Other people saw what we were doing and we drew quite a crowd who also wanted to talk to the fountain.
That's Hogwarts School of Wizardry in the fourth photo. And the last is a ride that I made Bruce go on without me. I'm not interested in roller coasters that go upside down.

I'm not sure what we're doing tomorrow. Maybe the Volcano Bay waterpark. I don't know how many photos I'll get there, as my iPhone got so wet IN MY POCKET that it now won't charge because it says there is water in the charging port.

After the party, Bruce and I took a short walk in a nearby park. It's a really beautiful area. If you're on the website, don't forget to click on the photos to see the larger versions. This won't work while viewing in email.

And when we got back, the peacocks had returned, including the white one that hangs around the neighborhood.

Tomorrow we're all going out for brunch for Sarah's actual birthday, then Bruce and I are off to Orlando for four days at Universal Studios.

There is a flock of feral peacocks that come by the house each day.

Yesterday we went out on Sarah and Jason's boat for a ride on the intercoastal waterway. A beautiful day, and we saw dolphins. One even came right up to the boat, but I wasn't quick enough to get a photo.

On Sunday afternoon we're off to Universal Studios in Orlando for four days. More pics to come.

Next we spotted a side road that said "Peaceful Valley Ranch," so we drove that way and found one bison on the road, and a donkey in a paddock at the end of the road. He looked at us as if to say, "What did you bring me?"

On the scenic drive through the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National park, our next stop was Wind Canyon Trail.

On Boicourt Trail we saw lots of evidence of bison, but thankfully didn't encounter any on the path.

On our way to Buck Hill Trail, we saw a small herd of wild horses. Below, Bruce is pointing out more evidence that bison had been here recently.

Our last, and possibly the best hike of the day was Painted Canyon Nature Trail. It was steep and muddy, but the views were spectacular.

Then it was off to spend the night in Steele ND, where the only interesting thing was a statue of the World's Largest Sandhill Crane. (Click the photo to see it without its head cut off.)

The museum itself is charming. It has many items of daily living from pioneer days up to the early 1950's. I was amused to see one of the old shoe store x-ray machines, and a hair salon permanent wave machine (looks like a torture device) that I remember from my childhood. It's a miracle we survived.

Most of the terrain from Deadwood north is flat prairie suitable for grazing cattle and sheep. There are long stretches where the road runs straight into the distance. Occasionally, stone monoliths loom up in the open range, like the Crow Buttes pictured below.

And of course, while traveling down a perfectly normal two-lane highway, we came to a stretch of road under construction that required a pilot car to guide us through the one-lane gravel section. I'll toss in a shot here of an oil derrick. We saw about half a dozen fairly small ones.

 To break up a long drive, I check out Roadside America to find odd and unusual places to take photos. RA came up with this gem in Bowman ND: A cowboy riding a missile, propped on an old fire truck. Also a weather vane airplane that moves with the wind, mounted on an old wooden bridge that we drove through. It didn't look safe, but someone on RA commented that they did it, and we didn't fall through.

We finally made it to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in the rain. We stopped at the visitor center, watched a short film, and had a look at Teddy's original log cabin (which was moved to this spot from somewhere else).
We spoke with a ranger and got suggestions for short hikes in the park, and there is a scenic drive if we give up on hiking. We'll try again tomorrow and hope the weather is better.

Well, that was a lot for a day that was basically driving from one place to another. Tomorrow, after the park, we start heading east on the way home. Just a few more stops. It's I-94 all the way to the Wisconsin Dells, so maybe I'll get some knitting done while Bruce drives.

We pulled off the road for a look at the intriguing sign for the Devil's Bathtub, which was a wide spot in the creek next to an abandoned hydro-electric plant of the Homestake Mining Company. (More about the mine later.)

Then it was a short drive and another easy hike to Bridal Veil Falls. Cascading approximately 60 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is the most accessible waterfall in the canyon. The view from the observation platform was great for photos.

We continued on along the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Drive to the small town of Spearfish, where we had lunch at Nonna's Kitchen, a cute Italian restaurant. You probably know that I follow a low-carb diet, so I was so happy that the chef at Nonna's created a beautiful plate for me with pan-roasted salmon, non-starchy vegetables and cauliflower puree. My usual restaurant meal is a burger, no bun, so this made me very happy. Bruce had spaghetti and meatballs.

After lunch we were off to the town of Lead (pronounced "Leed") a "suburb" of Deadwood, to visit the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center. This is the site of the old Homestake gold mine, now home to the Sanford Underground Research Facility.
As I understand it, and greatly simplified, Fermilab in Batavia IL (from which Bruce is retired, thus his interest) sends a beam of neutrinos to a detector far underground here in South Dakota. SURF also conducts other scientific experiments deep underground, far from the reach of cosmic rays. Science nerds can learn more at https://lbnf-dune.fnal.gov/.
The Homestake Mine was a deep underground gold mine (8,000 feet deep). Until it closed in 2002 it was the largest and deepest gold mine in the Western Hemisphere. The mine's open cut is impressive. The photos can't capture the scale of it when standing on the observation platform.

Our final hike of the day was up Mount Roosevelt to the Friendship Tower. Deadwood Sheriff Seth Bullock built the Friendship Tower in 1919 as a dedication to President Theodore Roosevelt, his close friend of many years. Bullock wanted to create a memorial of his friend’s life and a place where people could view wide open spaces that both Bullock and Roosevelt had become so fond of during their lives.

Pretty much everybody who heard we were going on this trip said we had to visit The Brothel in Deadwood. Right up until 1980, illegal sex work was active in Deadwood and largely ignored by local law enforcement. The guided tour of The Brothel explains how the world's oldest profession impacted the community and tells the stories of some of the women who worked in the sex trade.
The rooms contain a variety of period furnishings, from the 1800's up to the 1970's.

The rain let up a bit in the late afternoon, but we didn't want to chance taking a hike, so we hopped on one of the Deadwood trolleys, which are the only form of public transportation in Deadwood. They stop at all the hotels, and the outlying KOA campground, taking about 45 minutes to make the entire loop. It's $2 a ride, but residents and people who work in Deadwood ride for free. We stayed on for a loop-and-a-half, chatting with the driver and getting to see some parts of Deadwood we hadn't gotten to on foot.

Bruce discovered that there was a band playing at the #10 Tavern, starting at 9pm, so we ate supper upstairs at the Deadwood Social Club first and then enjoyed two sets of music from the 60's, 70's, and 80's by the Shuffle band from Utah. They had no set list. All the songs they played were requested by the audience via text message. And if they didn't know a song, they did a pretty good job of playing it anyway.
Tomorrow looks to be a sunny day, if a bit chilly. We hope to get in some nice hikes.