My husband got out of work early, so we loaded the car, said goodbye to our two toddlers, and dropped them and our dog with Grandma and Grandpa. We left our little Northwest Iowa town by 10:30 in the morning.

We had a gift card for Cheesecake Factory, so we stopped at the one in Edina for a late lunch around 2:30.

After lunch, we did a quick Google search for a good donut shop and found YoYo Donuts. We grabbed some breakfast for the next morning there and continued on our way, making a lot of jokes about the name of the delicious smelling donut shop. It became a trip-long joke.

Because we didn't get out of the cities very quickly, we got stuck in rush hour traffic, significantly delaying our travel. We finally arrived at Rockwood sometime after 10:30 p.m.

There was a note waiting on the office door for us, with directions to the bunkhouse. Mike had left some pillows and sleeping bags for us there, and we really appreciated that they had already gone out of the way to make us comfortable.

We made our way to our bunkhouse room, marveling at how beautiful the night sky looked, had our last showers, and turned in for the night.