Black Hills, Day Four: The {long} Road Home

We took I-90 home and the only things worth talking about are Wall Drug and The Corn Palace.  Since this post is coming so long after the trip, I was drawing a blank on what to talk about... so I asked Steve if he had any memories worth posting on a blog, word for word this is what he wrote:

"omg, $0.05 coffee!"
"omg, donuts"
"omg, tacos"
"omg, gas"
"omg, dinosurs"
"omg, breakfast"
"omg, wall drug, soon"
"wall drug, not too far away"
"wall drug, you'll see it before you see a tree"
"wall drug, we have cows"
"wall drug, we have stuff"
"wall drug, we have ads on every piece of land in SD"
Hay.
Wind.
Boredom.
Corn Palace
Breakfast making, part 1, almost eaten alive.
Sandwich making, almost blown over.
We used a wind sail to make it home
Minnesota, the longest leg of the drive.
BW's, a short break from the car
boredom
Minnesota sucks for driving speed limits.
I90 feels never ending Oh, and making up stories

Let me do a bit of explaining on some of those notes:

First of all: Wall Drug... they seriously have ads everywhere along this highway.  The ads are for literally everything you can think of.  I was trying to amp Steve up for Wall Drug, so I was being obnoxious every time we came across a sign.  His memories are tainted with my over the top antics.  That whole top portion of his notes are based on those signs.  We did finally make it to Wall Drug: 

We decided the night before that we should just pack up camp as soon as we wake up and on one of the stops we can pull out our camp stove and make omelets.  It'll be a good break for us from driving.  While on the road to Wall Drug we decide that it'll be a good place to make this happen.  So, after literally just using the bathroom at Wall Drug, we get back in the car and head to the gas station as we needed gas as well.  I asked about a park with picnic tables and was instructed where to find one.  After we fill up we want to go see this huge dinosaur at the end of the road - as we approach this huge dinosaur we see picnic tables right there... who needs a park?!  So we pull out the stove, the cooler... all the essentials for making our breakfast - just as we're about to get everything going, Steve notices these little gnat type bugs all over his white shirt.  They are biting us and they are ALL OVER!  ugh.  We pack everything back into the car and head to the park.  We are finally able to make our omelets and the town of Wall ends up being an hour long stop.

Back on the road... it sucks and it's BORING.

We play games, we stop to pee, we stop to get munchies out of the trunk, we stop to change drivers... anything to switch it up from this mundane drive.  Want to know how bored we were?  Steve says "I'm thinking of a number between 0-100; guess what it is" Then we play higher/lower until I get it.  Not only did we play this once, but probably a dozen times.  We also played I'm thinking of a letter between A-Z; guess it.  That's right folks, South Dakota is amazing.  NOT.

After like 27 days of driving...

...we finally make it to The Corn Palace, which is like forever off the highway and NOT worth your time... unless you are going absolutely crazy in the car and just need to see something ... anything ... different, and maybe stretch your legs.

All these 'murals' are made of ears of corn.  It actually is pretty neat... but not enough to make it exciting.  At least we got out of the car.

After seeing the Corn Palace we decided to run in an antique store really quick (limiting ourselves to 15 minutes) just for another change of pace; we buy nothing.  On the way back out to the highway we stop at the gas station to make up some sammies (sandwiches) before we get back on the road.  It's fricken WINDY outside and I damn near blow away while running the garbage to the trash bin.  So that was cool.

We finally make it back into our home state; Minnesota!

So now even though we are a good 5 hours away from home, we are at least in our state, which really makes you feel like you're about an hour away.  Longest. hour. ever.   Not only do we have to slow our speed way down, but Steve takes me on some dumb country road where we are driving slower than being on the interstate.  I get over that and just keep driving.
Steve is pretty much amazing when it comes to making up stories and he really knows how to make me laugh, so he makes up this crazy story about Charlotte and Charlie - it's not appropriate for my blog, so I'll move on, but not before letting you know that I almost peed my pants from laughing so hard.  TMI?  Too bad.

We are trying to calculate our eta back home and decide by the time we get home, we'll never get anything to eat for dinner.  Mankato is a hop, skip, and a jump away {45 minutes or so} - there is a Buffalo Wild Wings there... we both LOVE wings... so we chose to stop and delay our trip home a bit longer.  It's necessary though, it gets us out of the car and gets food in our belly's.

After eating it seems like the rest of the trip was a breeze.  It wasn't too much longer before we were in metro area and once you have things around you other than farms it's a lot less boring.

If you missed part of the trip, here are all the posts:

The Road There

Devil's Tower

Needles Highway and Crazy Horse

Wildlife Loop Road

Mount Rushmore

Caves

Rushmore at night

Thus concludes my postings of this trip; I hope you've enjoyed all the pictures and things that we got to see while on our road trip!  You can view all my pictures on my shutterfly (all unedited): hopesdope.shutterfly.com

PS - this is the front of my car taken at Devil's Tower in the beginning of the trip - 

I wanted to take one at the end but was too tired when I got home and it rained the next morning on the way to work - so a lot of the bugs washed off.  Imagine this doubled in guts.  We killed a lot of bugs, and a bird, and almost a magic rabbit.

Black Hills, Day Three Part Four: Rushmore at Night

Let's just get right to business - we've already covered Mount Rushmore - so all you need to know is we went back at night, this trip was another highlight of the overall trip - here are a couple pictures:

I spent most of my time taking the same picture with different settings, so I won't bore you with the details.

Here are some shots zoomed out with people in them moving about - ignore how washed out the mountain is:

It was simply amazing to see this mountain lit up at night!  Steve and I both had to take a step back and pull our eye away from the camera to really take this in.  Photos help you remember it forever but the actual memory of being there can never be captured.  I highly suggest seeing this at night if given the chance.

Up Next: The Road Home (aka the last post about the trip)

What you've missed:

The Road There

Devil's Tower

Needles Highway and Crazy Horse

Wildlife Loop Road

Caves

Black Hills, Day Three Part Three: The Cave

Day Three was a great success for us, we made it to a lot of places and saw a lot of things.

After Mount Rushmore we decided to head to a cave in the area, turns out nothing is too far from anything else in the area.  After looking at my pictures on the big screen I can't seem to tell which way is up in any of them ... so you'll get some shots of a cave, but little to no explanation as to what it is.  I will tell you we went to Jewel Caves in South Dakota and give you the link if you'd like to read about some of the things down there.

We were not allowed to touch anything down there, so no people pictures just pictures inside a cave which will likely be boring to you people reading - feel free to just move on.

 Cave popcorn:

 This one is pretty neat if you enlarge it:

 Cave bacon:

I felt like I had to keep moving since we were all in a single file line - I hate holding people up.  At one point she turned off all the lights inside the cave.  As someone who isn't a huge fan of the dark I was hoping this wouldn't last too long.  It was icky.  Thank God for boyfriend.

Up Next: Rushmore at night!

What you've missed:

The Road There

Devil's Tower

Needles Highway and Crazy Horse

Wildlife Loop Road

Mount Rushmore

Black Hills, Day Three Part Two: Mount Rushmore

After the wildlife loop we take another curvy road to Mount Rushmore.  Now I've seen Mt. Rushmore before in recent years.. Steve had been there once when he was little, but had no memory of it:

circa 2002:

Now I have a good camera and a boy I love, so we hook arms and enjoy it together!  Let's me just start by saying that to get into Rushmore it's $10 per CAR and that pass gets you in for the entire calendar year - which means that we can go back at night to see it lit up!  INSTANT bonus!

Another mostly photo post - on the curvy road getting there, we ran into a few places to stop and see Mount Rushmore from afar.  Click to enlarge...

I thought it was kind of cool to see the faces at the end of the road

 From a lookout

Once inside the 'gates'

We took a paved trail up near the mountain to get some other interesting views of the faces:

Of course, our "mug shots" (thanks Laura!).  We thought about trying to make it look like the guys were drinking out of them... but none have open mouths.  It was a silly idea.

Up next.. Cave pictures.

What you've missed:

The Road There

Devil's Tower

Needles Highway and Crazy Horse

Wildlife Loop Road

Black Hills, Day Three Part One: Wildlife Loop

Day 3, wildlife loop road!  How excited am I?  We've seen no animals, besides deer (which make me an absolute wreck while driving) - so I'm hoping for BIG things here!

This road was probably one of the highlights of the trip for me - for many reasons.  Mostly because we actually had a chance to see animals!

So we're driving and I'm all baby.. just so you know when we finally see a buffalo, I'm probably going to be so excited that I might hit you.. just so you know.  So off in the distance we see a buffalo, it was WAY back up in the woods... so it's not very exciting, but it is a buffalo, so I guess we can cross it off the list.  

We continue down this kind of windy road and up around the corner we see this monster!

The thing is fricken HUGE... I hit Steve.  I hit Steve some more as we pull up closer.  This little guy (little, my ass) was just hanging out on the side of the road.  I was so excited that I grabbed my camera and in the end wasn't even sure if I got him in any shots!  Steve looked and assured me that I had.

So driving some more we come to this huge field of more buffalo... as we are driving closer to it, we see some buffalo crossing the road and just off to the side of the road.  Now, I'm driving so Steve just grabs my camera and starts snapping pictures.  He got this guy as he was running off away from us.

The field of buff's... and me excited to be pictured with them!

This guy is called... a pronghorn antelope.  We came across many of these.. none of which ran out into the road like a deer might.  They are forever known as my friend.

Here is the super highlight, as if the buffalo weren't enough, right?!  We are driving and see all these damn donkey's {aka burro's}... they are all over and all up in the middle of the road.  I laugh.  Steve laughs.  They don't move!  They walk in your way and approach your car.. and LICK you!  I panicked and rolled up my window because I didn't want to be licked by these things.  Once we made it past them, we'd look at every car driving the other direction and think they have no idea what they are in store for... not to mention the motorcycles that were heading towards them with girls on the back and no helmets.  Many jokes and stories were happening in my car about how these girl were going to freak out when they got licked by these creatures.  In all.. it was pretty funny!  Here are some pictures:

Not to mention all sorts of burro poop in the road:

So, as we are driving, with the windows down I get hit in the head by something.  The girl in me freaks the fuck out, pulls the car over, jumps out all while Steve is looking at me thinking "wtf?!"  I explain that something pelted me in the head and I want to make sure it wasn't a bee or something and that it's out of my car!  I don't see anything in the backseat, nothing in my seat, nothing anywhere... until I look down to put my car in gear... YUCK!  This is the little bastard that hit me in the head... so I ask Steve to kindly get it the hell out of my car... as it's still alive and moving.  It ends up getting trapped inside my shifter area, under the part that moves.  So we he pushes the little plastic piece down and the little bastard crawls out.  {ugh, gives me the chills just thinking about it}... FINALLY, after what felt like 20 minutes of messing with this asshole, Steve gets him and smashes the fuck out of him!

Bastard Bug (click to enlarge, if you dare):

 My face while Steve is catering to my needs and trying to capture him:

Up next: Rushmore!

What you've missed:

The Road There

Devil's Tower

Needles Highway and Crazy Horse