Day 3: Casper, WY to Mitchell, South Dakota

Well two nights after little sleep is not very conducive to my happy meter. I won’t lie when I say the third day of our “adventure” has been tough, exhausting, and long! Tension is flying everywhere, and I feel bad for Loren who has to sit in the backseat listening to my mom and i argue and throw nasty comments at each other. But other than that, it’s been a good day.

For those of you that were concerned that Loren was going to have to sit on the roof, we miraculously fit all of our suitcases in the trunk! I should explain exactly how much stuff we have. I have a “beast” of a suitcase. It’s one of the biggest ones I’ve ever see and it is storing clothes that are in space saver bags. Then, I have a regular-ish sized suitcase that has the clothes I want to wear on the trip as well as both my mom’s toiletries and mine. My mom has her own small duffle bag and Loren has a suitcase. Somehow all of that is in the trunk—including various additions to my new room. In the car we have a pink ottoman filled with shoes, a crate with a cooler inside of it, a back pack, a trash bag full of snacks (Allison you’d be so proud!), and all of our purses. It’s kind of a tight fit, but it’s working.

We were anticipating a long day today. It was about 4 hours to Mount Rushmore, and from there it was about 5 hours to our hotel. I am currently writing this at 11 at night on the ride to our hotel room. Needless to say, I’m exhausted…so sorry if things start to not make sense.



On our way to Mount Rushmore (and also into South Dakota) we hit traffic. Traffic in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming! They were doing construction and for 12 miles the road had all this loose gravel on it. 12 miles!? Can they not chunk it out? I don’t quite understand all the construction they’re doing out here. It goes on for miles and miles and is just frustrating.

We were planning on stopping at Crazy Horse Memorial too today because it’s right on the way to Mount Rushmore. But since we saw it from the highway, we felt no need to pay the $30 to get in. It’s not even finished yet, but it was still quite impressive.



So by the time we get near to Mount Rushmore, my mom and I are both hungry and cranky. If you know either of us and have been around us when we haven’t had anything to eat in a while, you know that this is a deadly combination of anger, frustration, and sheer bitchyness. However, after a sip of XXX Vitamin Water and my first glimpse of the stony presidents faces, I was cheered up—to a degree.

But seriously, the monument is truly amazing. It’s breathtaking and even better than I had hoped it would be in person. I had always wondered what they were looking at from up high on their mountains in the Black Hills, and I finally got my answer. This beautiful view that I posted below is the countryside that they get to enjoy forever. I feel truly lucky that I get to see with my own eyes this amazing country that they helped form.

I want to go back already and see it at nighttime. I can’t even imagine how beautiful it must look at night. But even in daylight—and in cloud cover due to the approaching storm—it was phenomenal. Originally, Rushmore wanted to carve their heads all the way down to their waist. However, when Rushmore died, his son took over and had to stop the project because they ran out of funds. But, you can actually see the start of Washington’s collar being formed that I never noticed before today. The first picture is of the original modeling that Rushmore used.




But, even though we were fed, we are still a little tired and thus still cranky. And being surrounded by masses of people who are oblivious to what’s happening around them is just annoying. I can’t count the number of times someone has bumped into me without even saying, “excuse me”. After checking out the video, exhibit hall, and of course the gift shop, we were ready to leave.

On our way out, we passed this cute little town of Keystone that was crawling with motorcycles. I think I forgot to mention that this is the week/month of Sturgis—one of, if not the biggest motorcycle rally in the country. You can’t go a step without hearing the rumble of an engine. It’s been fun seeing a ton of different bikes along with a ton of different people.





All around Mount Rushmore are a ton of little tourist traps for people that are staying in the area. We of course are not staying anywhere near there, so naturally we were sucked in even when we were way behind schedule. However, this was no trap. It was well worth the money and we all enjoyed it so much. Two words: Bear Country.

It was kind of like a zoo that you got to drive your own car through, but instead of caged animals, they were roaming free and the road you were on just happened to be through their little area. We saw so many different wild animals. At first we saw a bunch of reindeer lying on a small hill. But then we got into a different section and saw a pack of arctic wolves! They were so cute and playful. It was so amazing how close they came to the cars—not jumping on them, just walking by.



Then these two deer that had skinny antlers walked right in front of our car forcing us to stop for a few minutes. One of them even started lightly hitting its antlers on my side on the mirror. I think it might have chipped some of the paint off. But at least I got a cool story out of it!



We also saw a mommy and a daddy buffalo with their two babies. The babies were cute—the parents: not so much.




And of course, we saw bears. Lots and lots of bears! They were so cute! Sleeping, and eating, and walking around. It was so amazing to see them so up close and yet be safely protected in the car. It was hard to pick out which pictures I wanted to use!





After the driving part was babyland which was home to a handful of adorable little cubs. They were all climbing this one tree and playing with each other. I could have watched them for forever. But, sadly, we had to leave because we really needed to get going.





It was shortly after this stop that my mom and I had our first semi-major fight. But it’s in the past now so we’ll just leave it at that. Hopefully tonight we’ll all get a good night’s rest and we’ll be better in the morning.

Another stop on our way to the hotel was at Wall Drug. They had signs leading up to it for 40 miles before it…and probably a ton more before we got on the highway. It was this huge collection of stores full of odd buys and weird finds. I would have liked to spend more time there, but we were hungry—again with the food—and were on our way. There was surprisingly more to do in South Dakota than one would assume.



So now here we are in the middle of Blackness, SD and chugging along to Mitchell. We’ve crossed over to Central Time to make it seem even later. I just can’t wait to shower and get to bed! Chicago tomorrow…and we’ll also be crossing the Mississippi River along the way.