Saturday, August 2, 2014

Wall Drug, Badlands, Corn Palace and the longest drive ever. DAY FOUR

This is it, folks. The LAST post about our trip to South Dakota. I know you are probably as exhausted as we were from this trip. But truly, you have to make these trips count and that means seeing and doing as much as you possibly can and that is exactly what we did.

So early Saturday morning, we all packed up our stuff and said goodbye to cabin KK3 from the Crazy Horse Custer Camground.


And hit the road. We decided last minute to cancel our hotel that we had planned in Mitchell and we decided to be total road warriors and not only fill our day being total tourists, but to drive all of the way home as well.

So we got going and our first stop was Wall Drug. Olivia was absolutely determined to see what Wall Drug was because she was getting annoyed at all of the signs. So we stopped.

Jackson saw the sign for the six foot jack rabbit and he honest to god thought it was a real rabbit. A bit disappointed that it was not real, but got excited when he realized you could sit on it. Until he realized that said jackrabbit was really hot from the sun so he promptly burned the inside of his thighs and quickly declared that it was the dumbest jackrabbit ever.
Matt found a new lady friend and managed to get himself his free Wall Drug bumper sticker. I got a box of six donuts which I ate in the car and regret not one moment of my gluttony, those donuts are fucking delicious. The kids each got their promised cowboy hat and Jackson got a cork gun (which is really annoying to hear in the car) and Olivia got a beaded coin purse. All was right in the world and we got back in the car again.

This time our destination was the Badlands Scenic Byway. Which we did backwards apparently but it was the same distance as going the highway so we didn't lose any time, but saw really amazing scenery.
Jackson, declaring that it's my fault he left his binoculars at home, made a show of using his pretend ones.
And the Badlands was actually pretty damn cool. I'm a bit of a geology nerd and I wish I could have stared a little longer, and certainly had more time to climb around on the rocks.
Olivia thought it was pretty neat and Jackson wanted to know if you would die if you fell off. I said yes because that's what he really wanted to hear.
You can't tell by this, but Jackson's face is sheer terror. He was convinced Matt would drop him and he'd fall and then die because I had just got done telling him that yes, you would die if you fell off the cliff.
 And you have to squint and look on the top of the car, but you can see they are using a wire hanger as an antennae. When you're sleep deprived and dehydrated because you can't remember to get a damn water out of the cooler, which is buried under stuff, that kind of thing is hilarious and highly amusing on the highway.

Our next stop was the Corn Palace. Now, I had googled extensively to find out what exactly is in the damn Corn Palace. Why is this a thing? Everyone told me it was stupid and not worth the stop but I had this fear if I didn't stop and we were literally right there, everyone would then say I should have stopped.

So we stopped.
And it was really fucking stupid. Seriously. Don't stop at the Corn Palace. In fact, this is literally the only thing going for Mitchell, South Dakota and it's dumb. We weren't even the only ones to say that. While in line for the bathroom, everyone was like, "This is the stupidest thing ever. What a waste of gas." And really, it kind of was.
I mean, they make murals out of corn. You can pretty much just google that and have the full Corn Palace experience. There are like, crafts inside of what looks like an arena, but that's it. Nothing else. They have their on site made caramel corn balls which was actually super gross. But the prepackaged caramel corn cobs were pretty good. The kids thought it was really dumb as well.

So then we got back in the car and hauled ass. We ended up stopping around 7 at night for gas and dinner in Worthington, MN. We ate at a Pizza Ranch and it was maybe one of the worst restaurant experiences I've ever had. I thought it was strange we were the only white, English speaking people in the middle of farm country, Minnesota. Jackson though the surprise was that I took them to Mexico. And yes, he blurted that right out and it was mortifying. It ended up being a weird chicken and pizza buffet, which is kind of a random combination, but they had literally no food. For $31 we got: one slice of ham pizza, a biscuit, a weird piece of chicken, some wilted lettuce and a whole bunch of croutons. We waited 45 minutes and I was getting so tired I told Matt let's just go because we have to get back on the road. It was 8:00 p.m. by the time we got back on the road and we still had six hours of driving left to do.

Needless to say, we rolled into our driveway at 2 in the morning, Sunday. I honestly don't know how either of us stayed awake because it was tough. I know for a good two hours we sang every Aerosmith song I could get on my phone via the cloud or whatever. When we finally got home the kids had been sleeping for hours so they are stumbling into the house like tiny drunk humans. Jackson was basically sleep walking and trying to take his underwear off. I'm still not sure what that was about. But we got them into bed and left everything in the car. We both crashed in the clothes we were wearing.

And of course do you think the kids would sleep past 7am?

No.

No they did not.

Overall? Epic vacation. It was so great that there has already been discussions of next year's road trip and Matt is trying to convince me that financing a camper is a good idea.

We'll see about that.

2 comments:

Heather Jones said...

Sounds like you had a very fun time. I love the picture where he's terrified he's going to fall off your husband's shoulders. I have never been to the Badlands before. Hope to get an RV one day and hit the states when we retire.

Kattrina said...

So glad it went well! It sounds awesome - I can't wait for road trips with my family too. I would love a camper - but maybe not the payments that come with it.