The Great Adventure - Day 11

This morning we woke up to thankfully realize that the rain had finally stopped.  It stormed all night, but the wind was the most annoying part as it kept rattling the tent sides and waking us up.  We went down and showered and cleaned up.  I straightened my hair and took my time getting ready while Nick packed up the campsite.  We JUST got in the car and the thunder, lightening, and rain returned.  It began right as we climbed in the tent the night before and returned just as we drove off.  Talk about God's perfect timing!

In the photo below you can see that it turned into a hail storm and there are white pebbles decorating the highway:

On our way to Mount Rushmore, we drove by Horse Thief Lake (which is where we were going to be camping before we learned it was closed until next month):

The rain abated as we neared our destination, but when we parked to go look at the mountain we were hit with cold mountain air.  A quick check on the car's dashboard confirmed that it was only 5 Celsius.  For all you interior folk, you should know that, that is as cold as it gets on the Western Coast, so it equated Winter to us!

Nick's winter coat has the best hood, lol:

A couple snaps of the mountain.  It looked like the presidents were crying because of all the rain just a few moments before:

Here I will entertain you with a couple slightly blurry photos of Nick fooling around in the gift shop.  (I've been shooting landscape so much lately that I had forgotten how wiggly human subjects are, especially on my 85mm!).

After a short stop we were back on the road under stormy, but dry, skies.

Aw, we're cute ;)

We pulled into a McDonalds at Grand Rapids, SD, to charge our devices, get some late breakfast/lunch, and plan out our camping dilemma for the night due to this unexpected cold, rainy weather.  Turns out my friend, Caroline, in Minnesota was up to having us a day early, so we packed into the car with our story-on-tape and snacks and got ready for another 6.5 hours on the road.  It meant that we had to skip a couple things on our "to-see list" like the Corn Palace and the Badlands National Park.  However, with this miserable weather, it seemed silly to endure a night out just for those couple things when we could have a bit more time with friends and a warm bed instead.  It's supposed to rain in that area and maybe even snow tomorrow anyways.  Not ideal sightseeing weather.  I have to say, though, that this portion of our journey was probably the most geographically boring so far.  The only thing to break up the landscape was the odd little pond or tiny cluster of trees.  A short nap spared me a bit, but Nick was a trooper for the long haul.

We passed the famous "Wall Drug" store on our way and decided to pull off for a quick peek.  We almost didn't, but my friend, Tara, recommended it and there were just too many billboards all down the highway to ignore and our curiosity was peeked.  We didn't have too long as we wanted to make sure my friends weren't staying up too late for us, but it was totally worth it even for the 10 minutes or so that we were there.  I don't even know how to describe the place.  It's like pulling up to an old-fashioned Western street, but all shiny and new looking.  Inside it's just like a mall with all the shops connected, but well... the best I can do is show you a few snaps I took and let you know that every inch of every wall was decorated to the point where empty space was a rarity.  There was even a little chapel inside!

We also got to do something I have always wanted to do - go in a little photo booth!  I know it sounds silly, but I have never, ever done that and always wanted to.  I would watch movies growing up where teenage girls would have these little photo strips decorating their mirrors or tucked away in shoeboxes under their beds, and I somewhat romanticized the concept.  It seemed even more "legit" as Nick pushed two $1.00 bills into the machine (as opposed to dropping in a Canadian toonie).  Paper money seems more authentic somehow.  Even spellcheck on my computer is telling me "toonie" is not a real word as I type this.  And now I have a little film strip of my very own!  I'm a dork... I know.

We continued on into the night which seemed odd to me.  The only time we have had to drive in the dark on our trip was our very first night down to Portland after work and the one time we were hoping in vain for "just one more campsite" that never appeared about a week ago.  It's been a pretty easy road trip so far.  (I can say that because out of the 5,500km we've driven so far, I think I may have only been behind the wheel for 400-500 of them?  My husband is amazing if you haven't figured that out already.)  But we've been hitting the road after 11am almost every day and stopping to set up camp before dark.  We've also had a couple days where we didn't drive at all.  We have a couple "longer hauls" where we'll need to drive 8-9 hours in a single day coming up, but the front end of our trip has been not too bad.  I just checked in with Nick beside me so that I'm not speaking solely from the luxurious passenger side (from which I'm typing this in hopes of internet later), and he confirms that it's been easier than he expected and he's never reached a point in a day where he's gotten sick of driving, though there have been a couple close calls where he was getting tired of it right before we stopped.

Anyways, we reached our Minnesota friends just before 11pm their time.  (We had a bit of an unexpected time change dropped in our laps mid-trip today!)  I have to say, they are pretty freakin' awesome in real life.  We spent about an hour and a half or so talking around the table when we arrived, and I laughed so hard I hurt.  On a serious note, I grew up not asking anyone for anything if I could help it.  I never wanted to risk putting anyone out.  So this road trip has been a bit of a stretch for me, reaching out to people I only knew online and asking if we could stay with them.  I have to say I have been so humbled and so blessed by all the people we have met along the road so far.  As cheesy as it sounds, it's been good for my soul and given me a new hope for humanity that I never really gave a chance to before.   America - you make good people and I'm honoured to meet them all.

And lastly, because apparently it's 1:30am (even though it REALLY feels like only 11:30pm to me), I'll leave you with a couple very quick snaps of the sweet awesome camper trailer our Minnesota friends put us up in for the next two nights!  Yes, that's right - they left out snacks for us!  Food - the quickest way to make me happy, haha.  Photographer friends, don't judge the skin tones.  It's late and they didn't look right in black and white ;)

As much fun camping in a thunderstorm was, we are VERY excited to stay here for a couple nights :)

The Great Adventure - Day 10

This morning we tried to get up at 8:30am, but due to the frequent sleep interruptions by the passing trains throughout the night, it was more like 9:30am.  We showered up at the camp bathrooms, and I set about making bacon and eggs for breakfast while Nick took down the tent and packed the car.  This was surprisingly difficult due to the wind whipping off the river and blowing the camp stove flame every direction except straight up at the frying pan.  We made a barricade out of all of our boxes and eventually got it all cooked!

We were on the road shortly after 11:00am.  We left our little canyon that we had camped in for the night and headed up into the mountains.  We realized that this was where we were originally planning to camp the previous night (but pulled off earlier due to being a bit behind schedule).  As we looked at all the snow and frozen rivers, we decided we were sure glad we had camped where we did!  It was actually our warmest night where I slept just in pajama pants and a tank top vs. the socks, pj pants, tank top, sweater, hoodie, and toque I had been sleeping in previous nights.  

Shortly after lunch we arrived in Denver Colorado.  We pulled into the first McDonalds we saw where I managed to upload photos and do some blogging and Nick called around trying to find a campsite for tonight that was still open.  Thankfully we found one and told them we would be there around 7:30 this evening.  It took FOR.EVER. for my photos to upload on the free wifi, so we ended up not leaving the restaurant until over an hour after we had arrived.  Nick drove all afternoon, and quickly made up for the lost time - not before we made a couple quick sandwiches and grabbed a couple sodas out of the cooler in the back of our car, though.  This is what the space near my feet looks like by about half way through our day.

The drive started off slightly overcast as we left Denver, but the sky gradually got more and more ominous.  

The sun came back just in time to make a pretty sunset as we neared our campground, and I felt relieved to know we wouldn’t be camping in the rain.  

We pulled in just before 8:00pm and thankfully they were still expecting us.  Most campgrounds in this area of South Dakota don’t open until “Summer season” which is still about 3 weeks away.  I don’t have a picture of our exact little plot of land as it was too dark by the time we paid and bought our fire wood, but here’s the little camp office.

Also, this campground has a shower as well!  There’s just a couple bathrooms and the toilette, sink, and shower are all in the one room.  But there’s just maybe one other family in this entire campground with us tonight, so it really feels like we have the place to ourselves.

Tonight, I made my very first fire all on my own.  Okay, okay, there were tons of pine needles everywhere and I had a battery-operated lighter that I used to set a pile of them on fire.  But I still had picked up enough from watching Nick to know that I had to pile the kindling on little by little, so it’s not completely cheating.  See - tada!

We finished setting up our tent in the dark and cooked some veggies and sausages.  The pic of me flipping them is where I’m completely freaking out because all the grease in the tinfoil is catching fire.  I may have been having a mini melt down, and Nick put aside the camera to come rescue me and flip the rest of the sausages.  Add fear of fire to fear of heights.  

Right now I’m sitting cozied up in the tent amazed that the wifi here is strong enough to slowly upload all these pics!  Seriously, you have no idea how cozy our tent is with this big air mattress and multiple sheets, fleeces, blankets, and feather downs.  I’m also so thankful that Nick put a tarp over our tent “just in case” because the rain is beating down on our “roof” right now.  The air keeps peeling with thunder claps and lightening flashes keep illuminating the tent walls as I type this.  Neither of us has camped in the rain before, and so far it’s pretty awesome!  (As long as it’s done before I have to try and make breakfast outside tomorrow morning!).

Now, we are on the last three chapters of our story-on-tape before we begin the second book, so I’m logging off and burrowing under the blankets to listen to that and the storm outside.  Good night!

The Great Adventure - Day 9

This morning we woke up from our little desert camping spot and hit the road again by about 11am.  It was a beautiful sunny day.  

A couple hours later, we pulled into a little town called Moab, in Utah, where we found a laundry mat / car wash with free wifi.  We spent a couple hours there washing our clothes and drying them, both in the big dryers and also on the roof of our car in the parking lot.  (Things dry very quickly in this heat!).  Nick washed the car, I blogged, and we charged all of our electrical devices.  

We grabbed some Subway for lunch as a treat and soon found ourselves following the Colorado River through some very beautiful terrain.

Suddenly, Nick got a great idea.  We had clean clothes, enough food for dinner in our cooler, but still really needed to shower.  The River seemed as good a place as any.  We pulled off to the side and quickly discovered that it was freezing mountain run-off.  But we really wanted clean hair.  Ironically, I pulled out my kind of expensive, salon-purchased shampoo and conditioner while I rolled up my jeans and got ready to wash my hair in the brown silty river.  It was… an experience, lol!  And very, very cold.  Also, the sand in the River is just like what I would imagine quick sand to be.  I stepped one foot too far and would have ended up fully in the river on my hands and knees if Nick hadn’t been there to grab me!  My foot just kept sinking deeper and deeper and there was no going back!  We survived and our hair was much softer.  No where to plug in a straightener, though…. ;)

We continued on through even more gorgeous terrain eventually coming up to the main highway the leads to Denver, Colorado (which was far less pretty).  

We passed a campsite around 6pm, but we pulled another “surely there will be one further on”, and this time we were rewarded by finding one that was JUST closing as we pulled in.  It was a little overpriced at $33.00 a night, but he threw in free fire wood if we wrote a positive review.  And that price WAS discounted just for us because apparently we’re super nice people!  The reason it was so expensive is that there were - wait for it, yes, that’s right, SHOWERS.  There were showers.  We did not need to wash our hair in the Colorado River after all.  There was also wifi in the far corner of the camp ground (so not SUPER helpful, but we managed to pull in a weak signal right in our tent from, well, we’re not sure where!).  The fact that we were right along the river probably also did not help the price, but it sure was lovely.  Except for the trains.  The trains sucked.  Directly across the river were train tracks.  The first one at 4am scared me half to death.  The following three, spread out nicely about an hour apart, were more just plain annoying.

Anyway, I digress.  We had our site set up by around 8pm and decided to quickly run back into town to stock up on groceries.  We bought enough food and snacks to last us the next few days camping and restock our dwindling cooler.  We also bought ice for the first time in a week!  (Tara, I know you’re reading this and you should be impressed.  We scored free ice at our motel rooms and it lasts without melting too much in our cooler for a couple days at a time).  

We headed back to our site to make dinner in the dark around 9pm and were very thankful for the borrowed lanterns we have both from our friends, Tara and Paul, and also one from our friends, Ryan and Michelle, (thanks, guys!!).  We fried up some veggies in tin foil over the fire and cooked up a few steaks that we picked up for $1.25 each at the grocery store.  Yeah, they probably should have been marinaded, but they were still tasty.  

We then climbed into the tent and both edited (me - photos, and Nick - video) under our warm blankets listening to the river roar by literally 10 - 15 feet from the tent door.  I left my fan in Portland, so this made me soooo happy as I sleep best with white noise.  Unfortunately the free random wifi wasn’t strong enough for me to also upload photos or else I really would have been blogging in real time!  Instead, you get these a day later curtesy of McDonald’s really, really, really slow wifi.