Finisher

Okay. So - to wrap things up for our US trip ....

After it rained on us in Glacier, we decided to pack it up early and head to the next destination. We'd been on the road at that point for twenty something days and we were all ready to head toward home. We wanted to hit a few things along the way though, so we started toward South Dakota. We tried to see Devil's tower in Wyoming along the way, but the fog made it difficult to see. It wasn't extremely high on the priority list either, so we didn't wait around to try and see it. We Made it to Mt. Rushmore that evening, but couldn't see it due to fog. We headed back to Rapid city and stayed in a hotel. The next morning, we had our 5000 mile maintenance done on the Subaru at the local dealership (closer to 7000 miles) and then went back to Mt. Rushmore. The fog had cleared enough for us to see the monument (a lot smaller than we expected). After we left Mt. Rushmore, we realized there was a nail in a tire, and we had opted not to carry plugs because we knew we had a spare. We quickly decided it was not worth taking everything out of the Subaru to get to temporary spare. We drove to an O'reilly's, bought a plug kit, and plugged the tire at a gas station in Rapid City.





We then drove to crazy horse (which we didn't get to see because of the fog), followed by Badlands National Park. Yes - this was all the same day. Once we had seen Badlands, we decided we were ready to head home and spent the next 40-50 hours driving straight from South Dakota to Florida. It was probably the longest consecutive period any of us have and ever will spend in a car.


Outside Badlands

 Random Ghost Town
 Random Ghost Town

During the drive home, there was really only one noteworthy event. We stopped in the wee hours of the morning at the visitors center in Sioux City, South Dakota, hoping that the bathrooms were still open. They were not. We drove around until we found a city park with public bathrooms. Sawney did not want to go inside, as she was worried there could be someone in there. Arden laughed at the idea and said there was no way. Just to prove it, he walked up to the girls bathroom to show her. He immediately sprinted back to the car with a wide eyed look. "There was somebody in there!" He said, just as we saw a homeless lady stick her head out the door with a startled look on her face. They had both scared the mess out of each other. We decided to head on down the road and find a different bathroom.

We got home about a week and a half early. We wrapped up a few things, worked on the house a bit, paid all of our bills and then packed our bags for Spain....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Glacier National Park

Image
The original plan (as in, the plan when we left the house) was to go to glacier and backpack for five days there. When we got to Yellowstone and experienced lows of 25 degrees Fahrenheit, we realized that we were ill prepared for this experience. The temperature, combined with the fact that they now charge $7.00 per person per night to backpack (we can stay in a campground for that price, with showers and toilets), we decided backpacking was out of the question. We arrived at the glacier national park east entrance visitors center (From Grand Teton) to find out that the road to the sun (the only thing we really wanted to see) was closed until late June. Oh well. We slept at a hostel and decided we would drive to the west side in the morning and see what we could see. The next morning,  We saw one bear cub running across the road, and one glacier. We hiked approximately one mile, and then promptly left the park. Nothing too exciting. We camped outside the national ...
Read more

Day 11

Image
(Arden) We awoke from our slumber, still drowsy from the drive yesterday. However, we had a game plan laid out for today's events. Firstly, we booked a tour into Lehman Caves, a well-known attraction for Great Basin National Park, with caves composed of numerous formations including stalagmite, stalactites, and even shield domes, a presumedly rare formation. From there forward, we were to hike about 3 miles round trip to see two lakes, a couple streams, and even more gorgeous views of the two mountains extending into the sky.  The plan started off on the wrong foot. Breakfast was to consist of leftover pancakes and sausage, made from the morning prior. Upon opening the cooler, we soon realized that everything was under water, including the beloved pancakes and sausage. Over the course of two days, the ice had completely melted, and water got into most of our food. We were depressed to see that the pancakes were submerge in water, inside the bag. We were only able to rescue thr...
Read more

Day ten

Image
Today we sort of zipped through both Arches National Park and Canyon lands National Park, in an attempt to distance ourselves from the desert environment we've learned to appreciate, but are also tired of. At Arches, we saw four or five, dare I say, arches. The most famous was Delicate Arch (a very popular symbol of Utah). We also saw landscape arch and a few others. We drove through Canyon Lands and Saw another arch. There was some other nice scenery. We left at approximately 4:30 to head to Great Basin National park. We rounded out the day camping outside the entrance to the park.
Read more