On the road again....

Things we take for granted:
Flush toilettes
Showers
Warm water

After 7 nights of camping in a row we could definetly use some
civilization. A city with a higher population than 311 people at least.

Its been 4 days since our last shower and I am only admitting this
because we are on our way to my uncles where I know there will be a
nice shower just waiting to clean me.

We are leaving South Dakota now and heading to Minnisota. We noticed
in the past few days just how differnt each state looks from the next.
Its pretty wild. Utah was red and sandy.. Colorado had huge mountains
with snow on the rockys and everything. Wyoming hilly and green. And
now South Dakota is almost totally flat as we drive through. Its
pretty cool to see the drastic changes along the highway. It is also
quite a trip to drive through time zones.

Our time in the rockys was pretty cool. We thought we would
Take the hiking easy but ended up doing 7 miles again. It was nice.
we saw a couple of beautiful water falls and lakes. We also hiked
through some snow which was quite a highlight for Guy. We had a lovely
dinner of pasta and chicken and some baby corn while we watched Ranger
Sue give quite the presentation on squerls, chipmunks, and marmates.

Last night, our first night in South Dakota, we stayed in a very
remote campground that almost no one knew the location of. We spent 2
hours last night looking for the damn place waisting miles in the
darkness of the Black Hills of South Dakota. When we finally found it
we found our selves in the most primitive campground yet. No flushing
toilettes (we are well aquainted i might say with your toilettes
micaela), no showers, and the only running water was freezing and came
from a push-with-one-hand-and-rinse-the-other faucette (have no idea
what they are actually called) which happen to have a nicely written
sign saying Please do not: wash dishes, hair, or brush teeth. WTF is
the water for then???!!! Anyway we made do (ignored the sign
completly) and plan on giving recreation.gov a peice of our minds for
suggesting we book the place without telling us what we were getting
ourselves into.

Dinner was good! We had stopped at a grocery store in the town at the
bottom of the mountain and picked up some real meat! NY steaks and hot
dogs. At first we were kicking ourselves for buying the steaks but in
then end they came out really good.

The next day we hit Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Honestly, for all
you future travelers, if you thought the four leaders of our country
carved in to the side of a mountain would be impressive, the American
Indians have got us beat by far. We made our first itinerary mistake.
We gave ourselves too much time at Mt. R and waisted time (and miles i
might add) we could have spent at Crazy Horse when we decided to eat
at this really aweful german restaurant in town. Last time we take
advice from an old man playing some really lame mini golf in the
middle of nowhere (lesson #4). We got to Crazy Horese too late to take
the bus to the base of the sculpture and missed all the natives making
crafts in the museum. What we did get to see was these two Indians do
some traditional Lakota dances and the "Leagends In Light" show. As
silly as it sounds it was pretty cool. A laser and light show
projected on Crazy Horse Mountain. Let me take a moment to note: the
figure of Crazy Horse is even less done than the presedsnts, just a
face and the outline of a horse head, and we wished we had spent more
time there. Oh well. Next time.

To top off our entire South Dakota experience we slept in our tent as
some pretty rageing thunder lightning and rain stormed outside. Kind
of scary at the time but looking back on it, pretty cool. We got up
this morning to a strangely dry campground (minus the car and tent)
cooked some breakfast and hit the road.

On to Minnisota, Chicago and then our next big adventure, Canada!!