Black Hills, Day One: The {long} Road There

So - I'm finally getting on to posting about my trip... the trip that took place a week ago :)
Without further ado, here is the most exciting post of them all... it's all about the road.

Steve and I woke up at about 5am and I think we were on the road just before 6am.  Our Google map told us to expect 11.5 hours in the car - we knew it'd be longer for pee breaks, stretch breaks, lets stop and look at this breaks, and some unexpected breaks as well.
Only about 30-40 minutes into the trip we make our first stop - we stopped in Big Lake, at my dad's work to say hello.  Little did we know his big ol' Great Dane would be there!  Anyhow... back on the road there isn't much to see... we just drive and drive hoping we get to South Dakota soon... this is what we see:

exciting stuff, huh?  Not so much.

Oh look... we've made it:

This is how excited I am to have made it.

The drive across South Dakota is, in a nutshell, Angus Cow farms, sunflower farms, corn farms, bean farms,  ginormous rolls of hay {73 million +1 rolls to be exact).  I know all of this because I decided to write down everything that SD brought into our lives.

We had to stop at Walmart because we forgot our camp stove... so we got pretty sucked into that.  lame.

I opened a bag of YUM:

I also jabbed myself in the gums trying to bite skin off my finger.. it hurt, it bled - I couldn't get a good picture that didn't highlight all the imperfections of my skin and hairs that I hope only I can see.  So just make up something really bad... picture finger nail going into the gum right below the front bottom tooth and also into the lip gum a bit as well.  It was stupid.

Me and boyfriend in the car:

We saw a bridge:

I took a nap.  Steve got a bloody nose:

We also saw a dinosaur:

We saw horses, lots of buttes, we kills mad bugs and never once cleaned the windshield.  I also killed a bird; it was traumatizing, but I'm over it know.  A rabbit jumped in front of my car too... I ran it over, but don't worry, it was a magic rabbit - it jumped right back up and hopped away.

Some other things South Dakota has to offer, you ask?
Cow hurdles, cow racetracks, two-headed cows, old men with ponytails and wrinkly skin riding motorcycles, no cops (seriously, we saw ZERO cops in SD), and no Audi's (it's a game we play).

We finally made our way into Wyoming and were pretty much impressed with how different the states are: Wyoming is much prettier and not flat (that's what he said).

After that point we are just purely anxious to get to Devil's Tower View Campground.  So drive, drive, drive... and drive we did.

We make it to camp and set up our tent with enough daylight left to grab a beer, a buffalo burger, and a slice of french silk pie.  I absolutely loved the Devil's Tower View Campground and will be giving them positive reviews all over the web to help get their name out there as it took me a lot of searching to find them!

 oops.. we ate the pie before taking the picture - enjoy the plate and forks.

Our view of Devil's Tower from camp:

So... we decide to stay put for the night - rather than venturing up to DT as the sun was beginning to set and we had no real interest in doing anything more for the day.  In all.. it took us just over 13 hours to arrive at camp.  Not too shabby!

Getting into our tent, it got windy and raining, thunder and lightening - at one point I thought we were going to blow away in our little tent.  It was seriously blowing so hard that the tent was practically touch our heads as we lay on our air-mattress!  It rained all night (I think).

... more on day two coming soon!