8/20/16 Just the other day, Jeremy was talking about how close Sturgis is to us now that we live in Colorado and it dawned on me that if Sturgis is close, then maybe Mt. Rushmore is close too. Low and behold it is only a short six hour drive away. Well, there is no time like the present for a family road and camping trip.
I've reserved a campsite at the Horse Thief Campground and Resort complete with heated pool and panning for nonsense. We will be 20 minutes from Rushmore, 10 from Crazy Horse and an hour and a half from the Badlands. We are going to have to take my car and load up the roof. The kids are just too stinking big now to all sit in the backseat. I wouldn't want to do it either. Just not comfortable.
I can't wait. This is going to be awesome!!!
8/30/16 We are leaving this weekend and haven't done a thing to prepare. Nobody scheduled to take care of the dogs. Need to buy another twin blow-up bed. Need to just get organized. Jeremy needs to figure out how to load things on the roof of my car too. I'm still excited. David told me tonight he was planning on running with his Cross Country buddies this weekend, which I think will be a no go. I am glad to see him finding and talking about friends. He has stuck to himself for so long and said he didn't need any friends. I just hope these guys are good guys.
9/3/16 I was totally excited about our trip last night and in a playful mood, but then Jeremy can't griping and complaining and coming up with roadblocks and it really set me on edge. I got to the point where I wanted to tell him to stay home if he didn't want to go...channeling my passive aggressive self. Then the kids this morning were cranky and I wanted to leave them behind as well. Now Jeremy is at the store which he could have done anytime this week, but chose not to and now we are leaving later than I wanted. BUT I will not be mastered by my irritation. I choose to have a good time. I choose to enjoy myself.
9/5/16 Despite the rocky start, it ended up being a great trip. I'm not a huge fan of the actual driving part. Very much wish we could just teleport places like in Star Trek, but the kids were great the whole road trip. It didn't hurt that we gave them unlimited electronics in the car there and back. Told them they had to stay in the car once we got to our camping spot. The owners of the Horse Thief Campground were very pleased to hear that I didn't plan to tell anyone there was internet access at the campground. I said and I quote, "We don't need no stinking internet. We are camping." I ended up not even telling Jeremy so he wouldn't get distracted either. I'll never tell and maybe someday when he reads all this he will be irritated with me, but I think it was the right decision.
We totally lucked out with the weather. At first I thought it was just going to be miserable and rain the whole time and then I would hear a litany of, "Whose ideas was this anyway?" I would have to deal with crabby kids and an annoyed husband, but in the end we managed to stay ahead of the rain and stay mostly dry. We did learn our tent may need replacing or maybe we get three smaller tents or four so everyone has their own private space. That might be overkill. I think we did find in what we had; however, as we were packing it up I saw the corners of the floor were wearing out and we have the start of some holes.
When entering Wyoming, I missed the pretty Wyoming sign and we had to settle for the sign at the visitor's center, which turned out fine. Glad we took it there because there was no sign between South Dakota and Wyoming. We ate Taco Johns in Cheyenne and discovered we were within a stone's throw of the state capital building. The building was so tiny and the city just seemed the size of Bentonville. I'm pretty sure the capital building was not much bigger than Bentonville's or maybe Fayetteville's. We did look up the population of Wyoming and discovered there are more people living in the city of Denver (not the metro area, just the city of Denver) than in the entire state of Wyoming which boasts a might 500,000 inhabitants. No wonder there is no sign between SD and WY, there are not enough people to pay taxes for the sign. We also noticed that both SD and WY had a shortage of speed limit signs. We could go 50 miles between signs. Many times I had no earthly idea what the limit was. I don't think it would have mattered because I never saw a cop. They probably can't afford them, again taxes. They could be making a killing off of tickets though. Untapped resource. The best speed limit sign was on our way back from the Badlands...80. Never seen that before. Believe me, I took advantage of it too.
