South Dakota

Here you go, the moment you've been waiting for. The story of my road trip to South Dakota. With a 10 hour drive ahead of us and a cup of coffee in hand, maps, and some good tunes, we were more than set. Now, once you cross the border of South Dakota, the vegetation becomes more and more scarce. Instead of seeing billboards for shopping, or possibly hiking, we get signs for the famous Wall Drug. It was well over half way through the trip of listening to the radio and singing at the top of our lungs, that one of my worst fears happened. A flat tire. Not just a flat tire mind you, but it was completely shredded. In the middle of a South Dakota highway. Luckily we had AAA but there was only so much he could do. Once the spare was put on, he told us we were good to go. We informed the man that we were from out of state and have absolutely no place to go. A call was made and unfortunately there was nothing with the size tire I needed. He said our only hope is to drive to Rapid City. This said city is 120 miles from our spot. When we asked him if we can make it, he just said maybe if we are lucky. We were also told not to go over 60mph. Awesome. At that moment we felt so hopeless. The good thing is that we gained an hour by crossing the time zone. And wouldn't ya know, after 2 1/2 hours of driving 50mph, we FINALLY made it Rapid City. We were very frustrated and tired at that point. And the story does not end here. Oh no! There is more.

Once we got a new set of tires, we headed off to drive another hour to our campsite, which at this point was dark. Setting up a tent in the dark isn't necessarily the most desirable or the easiest. We gave it a shot and when we realized the feat could not be done, we looked at the car and realized that would be our bed for the night. It was so cold! I kept adding layers of blankets and it still wasn't warm enough. I started loathing the module dividing my friend and I as I know if we could cuddle, we would be warmer. The temperature reached down to 42 degrees. Yikes! It took until noon to thaw from sleeping in the frigid car. 

And yet..... there is more to tell of this fateful trip. Once we got our weekend getaway home set up, we noticed on the campsite rules that there was a fire ban. I mean this is extreme. It's so extreme that if you were to smoke your cigarette, you'd have to do so in your car with the windows closed. Resulting from this fire ban is excessive heat (I mean the temperature outside) and extremely dry vegetation. This fire ban caused a lot of problems for us, this was our source for cooking. In the trunk of my car was a cooler filled with meat. So you can imagine this dilemma. We were told we were allowed to use a gas burner, which meant we had drive back to Rapid City to purchase one. 

And the fun continues...

The trip wasn't all a disaster. In fact now that I look back, I have to laugh. Despite all that, we got to see Mount Rushmore. It was pretty cool. I liked to be able to finally see it and mark off my Bucket List. And the next day we also went to a cave which was only 7 minutes from our campsite. However, when we arrived to retrieve our tickets, we were told the tour we were supposed to take was cancelled because the elevator broke. So they let us take a different tour which requires carrying a lantern and bending and stooping. You can imagine how nervous we were. Since we had more time than planned, they told us we could hike there and take either the short way or the long way. We decided to hike and save on gas a little and take the short hike. We accidentally took the long hike through Hell's Canyon. That is the real name. The hike was long and grueling and didn't help with all the dead wood from a fire that happened 12 years ago. Once we got there we had to wait for an hour for the tour. After having gone through it, it was fun. I enjoyed it. It wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. It was scary because I didn't know what to expect.

All in all, it was a good trip with a lot of laughs and I can look back and say I've learned and I can take that for the next trip.

Courtesy of a fellow photographer who knows what he's doing.
Thanks Mr. Photographer Man
for making it a decent picture.