[The events in this post occurred Friday, July 16 to Sunday, July 18, 2021. If you've not read the previous post here, "Live, from Sturgis," go back and read it now or you're going to be lost here and won't know what's going on or why I'm talking about the Black Hills and camping.]
Friday, July 16:
Adventure Day 2.
The overall plan for Friday was only roughly sketched out by the morning hours when we awoke -- a morning spent in Spearfish Canyon doing nature hiking stuff (something I'm not a huge fan of when it's super-hot and I'm sleep-deprived, but whatever, it's vacation) followed by the Denverites leaving for home, a picnic-style lunch with the family, and then campground time with the Canadians before we left the next day. Fairly simple, right?
So we thought, anyway.
As an aside, we did figure out what was going on with all of the Corvettes -- we'd arrived in town during the Black Hills Corvette Classic, an annual festival that starts in Sioux Falls every July, where hundreds (if not thousands of Corvette drivers gather and drive across the state to destinations in the Hills for events and the like. I was able to read up on it once we were back home, but apparently 2021 was the 50th anniversary of it...so it was a big deal for a lot of the folks involved. I couldn't find literature on this year's events (since it's over now), but here's the banner for next year:
As a further aside, I believe that photo is at least several years old, as I believe that's the old overlook point I remember as a child in 1991, driving up to see Mount Rushmore then. It's either that or it's a particularly bad photoshop job, because today, that road right below Mount Rushmore does not actually, presently, exist. Where the yellow Corvette in the photo is at the base of the mountain is the actual monument complex itself and amphitheater area, so it's either a really old picture or bad photoshop.
Anyway, the location points of the Corvette Classic don't really change much every year; however, in 2021, one of the stops was in Sturgis (Thursday), which explained why we saw so many Corvettes in and around that little town, and also explains why hotel rates were through the roof and hotels were booked solid. It wasn't just tourist season, it was the Corvette equivalent of Bike Week.
So, back to the main story...
We got up decently early in the hotel on Friday morning; I believe I was awake around 7 or so, primarily because I had to poop. I find it difficult to, ahem, use the bathroom while on vacation or traveling, as my sleep and eating schedule ends up being so skewed and out of sorts. Coupled with the (sometimes subconscious) knowledge that I am not at home and do not have access to my home toilet, it takes a few days for my body to adjust. Add to this that even with a different eating schedule, I'm still not eating that much at all -- my appetite has nearly disappeared a lot of the time now that I'm on the Metformin -- and I hadn't actually done any business on the toilet since Wednesday morning, approximately 48 hours before.
I'm sure you needed to know all that.
Anyway, I sat on the balcony in the morning air for a bit while I waited for Daisy to awaken -- the air in South Dakota is amazing, some of the cleanest, most fresh-smelling (and breathing) mountain air I've ever experienced. It's one of my many favorite things about the state. Because I'm not used to it and because I don't know what allergens are in said air, however, part of my daily pill routine was to take two allergy pills every morning when I woke up -- right out of my old-man pill dispenser.
I had a lot I wanted to get accomplished while on vacation up there that, up to this point, I hadn't done. Some of it, a good chunk of it, wouldn't happen on this trip because of time, energy, and money. Here was my rough list that I compiled before we left Omaha:
1. Wall Drug, especially the outside/back-end parts of it I hadn't seen since 1991
2. Seeing the rest of Deadwood we didn't get to experience in 2019 (like the museums/history stuff)
3. Mount Rushmore
4. Devil's Tower
5. Souvenir Shops / "Trading Post" places
6. Blaze Pizza
7. Taking the parents to the vegan restaurant in Rapid City
Some of this stuff I would get to do (obviously), but some of it I wouldn't, for various reasons -- for example, you already know we didn't get to go to Devil's Tower, and the vegan restaurant in Rapid City that Daisy and I loved when we were up there in 2019 became a victim of Covid and closed down. Not to mention that the parents were already leaving town by the time we got up on Friday morning anyway.
We had money to basically do whatever; before we left town, I posted two large payments to two of my credit cards and set travel notices on them for the days we'd be gone. As such, I had like $700 available to use on whatever we wanted, whether that be food, touristy things, souvenirs, gas, etc. Daisy ended up paying for the gas on the trip from her own card(s), and as she covered the hotel room as well, only a small chunk of what was spent during the rest of the trip was paid for by me. Most of the time she took care of stuff before I had the chance, whipping out her own card for incidentals wherever necessary. I wasn't necessarily opposed to this, but it sort of made me feel like a bit of an asshole at times. I'd make up for some of this later, but we'll get to that.
Once Daisy was up and about in the morning hours, we attempted to get directions to where the family was going to go for the nature walks/hiking in Spearfish Canyon. We got the barest of minimum directions -- I don't know or remember how, as there was almost zero cell service up there -- from the family, and we dressed and headed out.
I was not exactly dressed for hiking; that's mostly my fault. I had on a pair of shorts and my flip-flops, with a Smiths t-shirt and a heavy workshirt over it that I used as an overshirt/jacket/pocket for my vape materials. It wasn't sunny when we left the hotel; it was actually sort of dark and overcast, so I didn't even wear my sunglasses -- though Daisy did stick them in her fanny pack to bring with us. If I'd realized how uncomfortable I'd be most of the day, and/or how goofy I'd look in the many pictures that would be taken of me that day, I probably would have planned a better wardrobe.
This isn't exactly our fault, though.
In our rush to get ready and get on the road, Daisy, before we left the house in Omaha, had cut open her hand on...something, I can't remember what. It wasn't a deep cut, but it was the kind that whenever you move your hand, it opens over and over, and is painful. She cut open another spot on her hand the next day, too. It had gotten to the point where it was bothering her so badly that she declared we needed to get some liquid bandage for the cuts so she could actually go about her life without being in too much pain on her vacation.
We looked up some places that would actually have liquid bandage ("New-Skin") in stock -- the first place we went was a grocery store chain called Lynn's DakotaMart, which is basically the only big grocery chain in South Dakota from what I've seen -- this was in Sturgis proper, in the "downtown"-ish area, which wasn't incredibly far from the hotel. On that drive we got to see the true touristy side of Sturgis, as the town does cater heavily to the motorcyclist culture that it's known for. There are a lot of bars and saloons, and we were able to drive past the famous "Iron Horse Saloon" that is pretty well-known in biker culture. What surprised me more than anything else was the number of bikers already there and motoring around Sturgis during our trip. I don't know if these folks were locals, people passing through who decided to stop in Sturgis because it's Sturgis, or if they were legitimately bikers already starting to populate the town in anticipation of Bike Week -- which, when we were there, was still over three weeks away. Regardless, their numbers were substantial.
Lynn's DakotaMart did not have the liquid bandage, but they did have some paper plates and compostable tableware that we needed, and we got some chips/drinks and paper towels, too. All of this would later come in handy by the evening hours.
"Target has to have it," I told Daisy. "If anywhere out here has it, it would be Target."
The nearest Target was in Rapid City, so away we went.
Target did not have it. Target didn't even have anything close to it.
Walmart in Rapid City, down the street from Target in a different plaza, ended up having it in stock. Daisy purchased it, painted her wounds closed with it, and away we went.
During this time, as we had cell signal on the road and in Rapid City, we also found out that everyone had been at the hiking site waiting for us for over an hour (I have no idea how these people get up and mobile, get everyone into their respective vehicles, and get to where they're going all within like, an hour or so when most normal folks actually have to take time to actually wake up and go through normal wake-up processes), and had finally gotten tired of waiting on us, so they'd gone up the trails hiking already.
Classy. I mean, I get it, but still.
Spearfish Canyon is large. It's a very big area that stretches many miles south of the town of Spearfish (the "city proper" as it were), and stretches almost all the way down to the Deadwood area -- probably farther than that, actually, one way or the other -- I only know the barest amount of geographical details about the area. Since we had signal, we were able to get the directions and map out our journey up the canyon to the meetup point. It was...some ways up the canyon itself, through hundreds of twisty turns (filled with Corvettes) that felt like twenty miles or more. It may very well have been -- it's difficult to gauge distance when you're driving up curvy roads in the mountains. Our destination was a "landing area" of sorts with a lodge at the trail head -- from there one could walk up a multitude of hiking trails and become one with nature:
Or dress poorly and look really out of place, whatever works best for you.
So, as they'd waited long enough for us (thanks, New-Skin), we'd been told that they were just going to head up the trails and that they'd see us when they came back down, but we could hike around a bit or what-have-you -- we were given the impression that it wasn't a large area, and that if we "went a-hikin'" ...we'd run into them eventually.
We found the parking area, which had but one spot left open in it, and I knew it was the correct one as I saw the Canadians' behemoth Nissan passenger van parked there right at the entrance to the trail head. We did not see the Denverites' vehicle, which sort of concerned me at the time, as I feared maybe we'd missed them. It turned out (unbeknownst to us, because both of us were stressed and not paying close attention) that we parked legit right next to them, since their SUV is so nondescript and bland that it doesn't stick out in a sea of other nondescript, bland SUVs.
Something else I want to mention before we go further is that it was fuckin' hot outside that day. You can see from the photo above that it's bright and sunny, which (I'll remind you) it had not been when we left the hotel -- well, being around water also made it unbearably muggy and humid too. Do you know what happens when you go into the wilderness and it's hot and muggy and you're around water? The kind of flies that bite you so hard they draw blood like to live there. No, I'm not talking about mosquitoes -- these are flies, like horseflies but smaller, and they bite you. Each bite feels like a small bee sting, and most of them literally draw blood. The bites also itch and scab over and take forever to heal. To this day, a few weeks later, I still have fly bites on my legs that are slowly healing up -- Daisy asked me last night what the wounds on my legs were, and I told her it was the fly bites from that day.
Daisy, undeterred by the heat and the flies (two things that would normally bother her) was gung-ho about the hiking. This was a part of the trip that she'd looked forward to, and she actually wanted to go up into the wilderness and hike a lot. Meanwhile, I was sleep-deprived, my back was killing me from two nights in a hard hotel bed, and I was neither dressed for the occasion nor had my hiking shoes on.
"Let's just start walking," Daisy said. "We'll eventually run into them as they're on the way back down."
Um, maybe, if they took the same trail we were taking. Otherwise probably not.
The hiking trail started at the parking lot, went over a little wooden bridge over a rushing stream (you can see the stream in the picture above) and forked off left and right once you started ascending the hill. We chose the right path, and began walking. I learned very quickly that these trails were trails made for hikers, as in people with good shoes/boots, walking sticks, and actual energy. Oh, and people who didn't mind hiking up a mountain incline. As such, we got about 200 yards up the trail, with nature all around us, and was already getting very tired. It was hot, it was muggy. I was having trouble breathing because of that and because I'm fat. We passed (and let pass us) a lot of people on the trail who seemed really into hiking and who were properly dressed for it, and I felt like a touristy idiot in the wilderness.
I told Daisy that while I loved her, I wasn't feelin' it and I just did not have the energy to go all the way up this mountain looking for the family; they could find us and deal with it. I wasn't trying to be cruel or trying to rain on the parade there, but after constantly running the two previous days, barely eating, barely sleeping (on that miserable bed, at that), with energy drinks, but no coffee fueling me, I was rapidly reaching exhaustion, and I wanted my vacation to feel like a vacation, not a chore or a slog. What could've been a fun nature hike had it been 20 degrees cooler with no biting flies had turned into what felt like a death march.
...I feel like I'm being slightly dramatic here, so I'll stop.
We came to a break in the trail, and to the right of us was a large, beautiful mountain pond. There was a well-worn path leading down from the trail to the pond, which had a long walking bridge across it.
The picture here does not do the beauty justice -- this was a breathtakingly gorgeous place. I took relatively few pictures on this trip since Daisy has a much better camera and a much better photographic eye than I do. This was the view about halfway across the walking bridge, which was built on top of a man-made dam/aqueduct system to control the flow of the stream below. Daisy got a better pic of the bridge and aqueduct system itself, but I'm not posting it here because the kids are in it. Speaking of which...
As we were on the bridge taking in nature, we heard our names being yelled from far away up the trail, by a booming voice that was unmistakably our Canadian brother-in-law. I looked up, but couldn't see any of them -- when I say it's in nature, it was nature, and the tree cover was thick. Also, if you hadn't noticed from all of the posts I've written about getting an eye exam and all of my new glasses, my eyes suck and 40-50 yards away, people are blurry blobs. I saw the Denverites first, followed closely behind by the Canadians, coming down the people bridge from the same direction we'd come -- so clearly they weren't that far up the trail ahead of us.
Our youngest niece (read: my shadow) ran to the front of the pack of them, and as soon as I saw her, I crouched down and grinned, with my arms open wide. The look on her face as she realized it was me and came running to my open arms as fast as she could is a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. It was so sweet and precious that I could have cried.
As an aside, Daisy thinks her Canadian sister has baby fever again -- throughout most of the trip, she was joined at the hip or lap by her older sister's youngest son -- her nephew and ours -- and took him everywhere with her. I'm sure her older sister didn't mind as it was one less child to keep track of, but the Canadian sister seemed to bond with that child almost in the same way I immediately bonded with my shadow niece.
Later I would ask Daisy, "Can we take [niece] home with us? I mean, they can always make another one, they don't need this one that badly."
She didn't find it as funny as I did.
It was as much of a joke as it was the truth, on a few levels. Daisy's Canadian sister, when I first met her, only had three children. She now has five, with my shadow being the youngest. Daisy's Denver sister only had one child when I first met her, and was pregnant with her second. She now has four total, and the one she was pregnant with when I met her is now eight years old. Both families, as you could imagine most religious families do, went forth and multiplied.
Anyway.
Once she had found me, my shadow didn't leave my side. Her hand permanently attached itself to mine, and she wanted once more to show me everything she could again. That little girl is full of wonder and curiosity; she is such a good kid. I can promise you I was far more rambunctious and far more of a troublemaker when I was her age, though I did tend to idolize my aunts and uncles a fair amount.
As mentioned before, she also was a big fan of my oldest nephew on the Denverites' side as well, and from what I was told later, apparently always wanted to be around him when I wasn't around, too. No preteen boy wants a little kid stuck to them at all times, though. With age comes wisdom, and I have a feeling as he gets older he'll appreciate the kid more. He was a poor substitute for Uncle Brandon, though, from all indications. Daisy got one of the cutest photos I've ever seen of us walking back down the trail, with me holding my shadow's right hand and said oldest nephew holding her left hand. I won't post that here for privacy reasons, but yeah, that happened and it was cute.
Once we got back to the landing area, the kids took off their shoes (and in some cases, rolled up their pant legs) and cooled off in the rapidly rushing stream at the base of the hill, splashing around and being kids. It was very sweet and peaceful to watch, even though I was getting eaten alive at the time by the biting flies, which seemed to come in swarms around the flowing water. The temperature for the day was beginning to climb, and the sun did us no favors in that department. I did not have to (yet) put on sunscreen, though I likely should have.
The kids played for an hour or so while the adults rested, relaxed, and talked a bit. The Denverites had to head back home after we were done at the Canyon; my oldest nephew had a swim meet the next day (or something like that, truth be told I didn't pay that close attention) and at that point they'd been camping for almost two straight weeks -- the week before they met up with the rest of the family, they'd been camping somewhere else, apparently. They were tired, and as our brother-in-law had already returned to Denver the day before after the lake/boating excursion, they wanted to return home too. Mind you, the parents had already left for home that morning, and with the Denverites leaving, it would just be us and the Canadians left.
We said our goodbyes and helped them get loaded into their SUV -- it was a 5-6 hour drive, if not a little longer, back down to the Denver area from Spearfish Canyon, meaning they had the least amount of travel to get home compared to the rest of us, but that's no short trip either. It reminded me just how far from home we really were -- it's a 10-ish hour drive to Denver from Omaha; Daisy and I have made the trip out there and back together once. It's only about eight hours for us to get to the Black Hills from Omaha -- give or take.
"So here's our plan," the Canadian brother-in-law said, once the Denverites had left. "there's a little restaurant up in Spearfish that we were going to go to, and my grandparents wanted to meet up with us while we were here, so we're going to try to do some sort of picnic thing with them, then I guess dinner back at the campground."
It was something along those lines, I can't really remember all of the details now. But, we agreed to follow them to the point where we'd meet his grandparents and then follow them to this restaurant/picnic area or what have you. The drive would take us up into Spearfish proper, which was further north into the hills and mountains than we'd been before -- Daisy and I had never really left Deadwood when we were there in 2019, aside from going to/from Rapid City and Mount Rushmore, so we'd already seen a much larger chunk of the area than we'd initially expected to. So, the Canadians piled into their people-hauler and we followed them back down out of the canyon, and then on the road up to Spearfish. We let them lead the way, keeping them in sight of us at all times -- they knew where they were going and we did not.
On the road to Spearfish, I noticed that the Corvettes around us were, ahem, multiplying. I am unsure if Daisy noticed that or not, but it was pretty hard to miss and we'd been talking about the Corvette rally that was apparently going on somewhere while we were out there, but it was an ancillary conversation most of the time -- I said I must've seen 500 Corvettes while we were there, and she found that to be a grossly exaggerated number:
"I doubt we've even seen 100," she said.
"No," I replied, "trust me, we've seen far more than that. We've probably seen 100 today alone."
This also doesn't count all of them that I saw screaming down the highways from the vantage point of our hotel balcony.
So, after some driving, we pulled into Spearfish and followed the behemoth van to what appeared to be a large, residential park area. Trying to get into the park area, we were greeted by a bunch of cops and traffic cops who had blocked off the street and were directing folks to different areas for parking, for...something. Daisy turned around where we could and we parallel-parked on the street about half a mile from where the cops were directing traffic.
"...what the fuck?" I asked aloud, to no one in particular.
The Canadians had turned around as well and came back up the hill. They stopped at our car and lowered the window.
"So apparently there's some sort of festival at the park today, and we can't get in there. I'm gonna follow my grandparents as they know of a campground area up here with picnic tables where we can get out and eat and enjoy the weather."
My first thought was if that was the overall plan, why didn't we just go back to the actual campground? I'm not judging anyone, mind you, but logic is a thing. But, apparently, his grandparents lived in Belle Fourche, which is actually quite a bit north of Spearfish proper and would likely double or triple their driving time to-and-fro if they'd gone down to the campground in Deadwood, so I didn't say anything.
As an aside, the festival that was going on? Yeah, you probably guessed it, it was the Black Hills Corvette Classic, and Friday was their day in Spearfish for their big final meet-up and, well, festival.
"So we're following them, and you can follow us, because I don't exactly know where we're going either."
And with that, we were off. We found a parking area off a residential side street to turn around in, and then were headed back down the road again, where our journey took an unexpected turn as we made a turn that...took us right back up Spearfish Canyon, where we'd just left nary an hour before.
"You're kidding, right?" I asked Daisy as we continued to follow them. "I'm glad our car at least gets good gas mileage." We'd probably driven it 60-70 miles that day already.
We continued to drive up the canyon for miles upon miles, past the section with the hiking area and the pond, and continued upward for some time until, eventually, there was a pull-off public campground section on the side of the road at the base of a mountain. The grandparents pulled off, the Canadians pulled off, and we followed. It took us through thick foliage about 100 feet or so up a dirt/gravel road set back from the main road, and in it were open-stall-like parking spots with public grills and picnic tables attached to each area. At the far end of the picnic area there was a small brick building with indoor bathrooms. We were the only folks there.
The area was immaculately clean -- the Hills has a basic policy of "you take out what you take in" when it comes to campsites, meaning you don't just throw your trash around and there are no trash cans; you're expected to take all of it back out with you when you're done camping and picnicking. Behind the campground was a trail with park benches on it at each end and an informational plaque about the area. The trail butted up against a roaring, rushing stream that came down from the mountains. It was incredibly beautiful, and I snapped these pictures of it, which (again) don't really do the place justice:
We settled in with the Canadians and got to meet our brother-in-law's grandparents, who were also...shall we say...very set in their ways and in their religion, to the point where it was very evident that the grandfather saw women as, well, not really worth his time (he completely ignored Daisy and walked away when she tried to talk to him and get to know him, but spent a good 10 minutes asking me about where I was from, what I did for a living, etc). The grandmother was mostly very quiet and kept her head down, keeping to herself until she was spoken to. She seemed to be a very kind, sweet old lady though.
When the kids were done eating, they ventured down the trail/path mentioned above, the one with the plaque on it overlooking the rushing stream, to climb down into the water again and get their feet wet.
For those of you who are curious, this is the informational plaque:
You can click that to zoom in on it, if you're interested enough. I assume you are, if you've read this far.
Anyway.
Finally able to get a moment's peace away from everyone and everything, I just sat down on the park bench on the far end of the trail -- far enough away to where I couldn't hear the kids or Daisy and her sister talking, but not too far -- and I just...relaxed. I looked up at the mountain, I let the sun hit my face, and I loosened up all my muscles. It was almost a meditation experience. For the first time in weeks I felt really at peace, at one with nature, at one with myself and who I was and who I was trying to be, and I tried to let the stress melt off me as much as I could:
It felt so good to just sink into that bench, breathe in that mountain air, and just chill for a bit.
I also think this is one of the best photos I've taken of myself in many months. All I did was hold up the phone while I was having my little moment of zen and snapped the photo.
Anyway, I digress. Back to the story.
One of the things you'll likely know if you've spent any real amount of time in the Hills is that the weather can change at the drop of a hat, and drenching rains/thunderstorms can roll in off the mountains at pretty much any time. I don't know if the same is true in the winter as I've never been up there in the winter, but it's definitely true in the spring and summer. Daisy and I narrowly missed getting caught in a downpour when we were up there in 2019, and this time around, about an hour after we'd been at the picnic area above, we noticed it getting dark...and quickly, at that -- in the middle of the day. It began thundering. The family began packing everything up and getting it loaded back into the van, and we got our own stuff together to get it ready to head out.
We were all splitting off a bit at this point -- the grandparents were going back home, and we were following the Canadians back down the mountain to the campground, with a stop for some groceries first. That was fine with us -- the parents had asked us to pick up a few bags of Old Dutch dill pickle potato chips for them (we can't get the Old Dutch stuff in Omaha) on the way home, so...kill two birds with one stone, I guess.
Our drive in what, at times, was a pretty intense rainstorm took us out of Spearfish Canyon a different way than we'd come in -- we basically went up, and then down through another set of mountains, through more winding roads filled with Corvettes, until we came to a little souvenir shop/trading post place on what appeared to be the Wyoming border, based on the road signs -- where Daisy was finally able to get some bottled water to drink. After that we followed them in the van back down to civilization (in the rain), at which point our phones finally started working again (as we both got a flurry of text message and camera notifications. We found that we weren't going back into Deadwood proper, but into its larger sister town of Lead, which was a few miles away.
Lead (pronounced "leed," not "led" as in Zeppelin) is a more modern, updated, small town with what appeared to be a much larger population and not as much of a tendency to focus on the historical aspects of the area. It was almost like one of the smaller towns that act as suburbs of Omaha, but are still counted in the Omaha metropolitan area. Lead had stores, gas stations, schools, libraries, etc -- and to be fair, it did still have a decent downtown shopfront area as well, but most small towns out here in the midwest/west do. Lead has history of its own -- apparently at one point in time it was home to the largest gold mine in the country, or something -- but we didn't get to see much of that stuff while driving through it.
The Canadians pulled into another Lynn's Dakotamart and we followed them in -- at first accidentally going into the Ace Hardware store next door for a few minutes -- where we found that the reason they were stopping for groceries was so that they could take stuff back to the campground to cook us a big dinner.
"That's really not necessary," I told my brother-in-law. "We have so much food at the hotel; you don't have to worry about us -- take care of yourselves and the kids."
"We have to pick up stuff for us anyway," he replied, "so it's not a big deal just to pick up a little extra and cook for you and [Daisy] too. It's really no big deal."
I wasn't a huge fan of this idea -- not that I didn't trust their cooking (I do), but I don't like putting people out. I don't like making them feel like it's their responsibility to feed us when they have seven mouths to feed on their own, and we are perfectly capable of making sure we get by. Still, this is a family tradition for us with the Canadians in a weird sense -- whenever we see them, or spend time with them, they want to cook for us. When we helped them clean up, repaint, and move all of their stuff to storage units and the like when they had sold their house and were pulling up stakes in Nebraska to move to Vancouver (they now live in a little town in Alberta), not only did I get a free pickup truck out of the deal but it was very important to them that they cook dinner for us to show their love and their thanks. In a sense, doing that is part of their love language. Daisy and I know this and accept it, but that doesn't mean it always sits right with us. Back then it was sort of a given, not that I took it for granted but we knew it was coming, but now? They're in a mobile home on a campsite in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota -- I didn't want me and Daisy to be any unnecessary burden or strain on them nor did I want them to spend money on us.
I went back to Daisy and told her their plan, and after a few discussions between us and them, we reluctantly relented -- we knew it was important to them, and because we'd gotten back so late from Mount Rushmore the day prior, they hadn't been able to cook for us then either, meaning they doubly wanted to do it this time.
I'll step back here for a moment and note that the Canadians know we have special dietary restrictions -- what with me being vegetarian and diabetic, and Daisy being vegan -- so finding something we could eat and making the effort to do so, while keeping our foods and utensils free of animal product contamination was no easy task. South Dakota isn't particularly kind to vegetarians and vegans -- it's full of the type of people who don't think a meal can possibly be a meal if some sort of meat isn't involved, and from what I've seen, it's not that they don't like people like me and Daisy, it's that they don't even acknowledge or realize (in most cases) that we actually exist. I've followed Wall Drug on Facebook for years, and in the pre-Covid times they used to post their weekly lunch menu for the cafe. Never, and I mean never, was there anything even remotely vegan or vegetarian featured on said menu, with the exception of, say, "tomato soup and grilled cheese day" or what have you. That's about as close as anyone was ever gonna get up there, really. Part of it I think is the staunchly conservative culture up there and how everyone is really set in their ways, but...
Here's the part where I inform all of you that South Dakota now has fully legal weed, just like Colorado and California and a lot of other states do now, as of July 1:
Hot damn, South Dakota -- leaping into the 21st century and living dangerously.
I will also mention that nobody is advertising this anywhere, anyhow up there. At all. Nowhere. There are less than ten dispensaries in the state, and at least two of them are on tribal land. Now, I would imagine that's partially because it was just finalized-by-law-legalized this month, but I mean c'mon man. Think ahead. There were also no news reports or anything that were like "oh by the way, don't forget weed is legal now, smoke up Johnny" or anything like that.
Anyway, if I don't stop going into these multiple digressions, I'm never going to finish this story.
So we settled on grilled vegetables -- kebabs, potatoes, etc. Stuff that would be good for me and Daisy to eat, that wouldn't make us sick or get contaminated, and something that would fill us up. Also, vegetables are cheap -- when you live out here, vegetables are always cheap.
We paid for our respective groceries (I was able to find several new flavors of Monster I'd never seen before, which was neat, and Daisy got us some chips as well as the chips for the parents) and made our way out to the parking lot. By this time it was Friday rush hour in Lead, and there was a crazy amount of traffic. There was also (conveniently) road construction on the street we were trying to get back out onto.
Brother-in-law rolled down the window of the van. "Traffic is awful and backed up for miles, don't know what's going on. Follow us though, I think I can get us around it, but it'll take some hinkery-jinkery."
As soon as he rolled the window back up and we were able to put ours back up, I turned to the wife and whisper-screamed "Hinkery-jinkery! HINKERY-JINKERY!" we were both tired and sleep deprived and thought this was the funniest turn of phrase to ever cross our ears.
They led us across a few streets into an industrial area, then through that into a residential area where the streets down the side of the mountain face were switchback-style. Throughout the harrowing journey through narrowing streets, I began to sing a song...
"You take a left turn, we'll take a left turn, hinkery-jinkery dooooo....put 'em together and what do you get? Hinkery-jinkery doo!"
Soon, Daisy joined in, and as we continued to sing, we got to what looked like Lead's main street area, found that it was mostly deserted and we had a clean shot out of town back to Deadwood.
I'm going to pause here again to note that while writing his post, I stopped to go downstairs and make a sandwich/eat some string cheese in order to take my second Metformin of the day, and while I was doing so, I was quietly singing this song. I would not be surprised if, upon waking up for the day tomorrow, Daisy asks me something along the lines of "were you downstairs at 4am singing the hinkery-jinkery song?" and I'll have to reply that yes, yes I was.
Once we were on the road back to Deadwood everything was fine. We had spotty cell signal, we knew (roughly) where we were going, and we also knew how to get back to the campground. However, instead of turning into the campground lot when we approached it, the van continued onward up the road...to the tent stand where the kids had gotten all of their custom-made tie-dye shirts. They hadn't forgotten about me, I thought. They wanted me to get my shirt.
This was, exactly, the case. Daisy's sister got out of the van as she wanted to check the place out a little more closely and see if she could get a new pair of sunglasses, and our brother-in-law asked us to bring her back down to the campground when were were done. The campground was literally 1/4 mile away, so it's not like that was a big deal or anything. As we were all getting out to go inside the tent mall, it began raining...and raining pretty heavily. It appears that the storm we'd outrun in the canyon and higher-elevation hills had finally caught up with us back in Deadwood...or it was another, completely different storm system, because Black Hills weather.
The inside of the tent was a rundown, little dumpy place, filled with folding tables stacked high with folded shirts. The tie-dyes were against the back wall -- it was one of those places where you could pick a blank shirt, pick the decal you wanted printed on it, and they'd do it right there for you onsite. I've never seen those sorts of shops anywhere outside beach towns.
Well...none of the tie-dyes were larger than 2x. Tie-dyed shirts are notoriously hard to shop for because in order to hold the dyes and prevent bleeding and fading, they're usually made of a special type of really heavy cotton, and those shirts are hard to find in fat-guy sizes of 4x and 5x. Add to this that said shirts usually shrink badly upon their first wash and generally continue to shrink just a little more with each subsequent wash, so I always try to get at least one size up from my normal size when I buy a tie-dye. I was saddened and a bit frustrated before I saw a table full of trashy motorcycle shirts -- they were shirts that had already been printed up for the upcoming motorcycle rally in Sturgis, and they had a large chunk of them in multiple fat-guy sizes...all the way up to 5x. So....
...when in Rome, right?
The shirt was only sixteen dollars -- I expected it to be almost twice that. If I would've known that I would've looked around for a few others in varying designs, but I was also tired and anxious and the sister wives were waiting on me, so...
Satisfied with something on my list being checked off for this trip, we returned to the campground while the rain was still coming down pretty steadily, making the ground soggy and muddy. On the outside of the camper, our brother-in-law had put up the canopy, and had tied/hung two big weatherproof tarps off the outside edge -- essentially making us a large tent that kept the weather out and kept us inside warm and dry. I was once more reunited with my shadow, who was thrilled I was there and who sat with me for over an hour showing me games on her little mini-tablet, and getting me to play them with her. It was so cute.
Eventually, the rain rolled off and the sun came back out -- full-force, at that -- as if nothing had happened. About half an hour later, one of the campground "neighbors" stopped by and mentioned that since the rain had now stopped, they were reopening the swimming pool. Yes, in addition to everything else, the campground had an in-ground swimming pool on the far end of the camp, next to "The Chalet" where the Denverites had stayed while they were there. The kids wanted to go swimming before dinner, so all of them changed into their swimsuits, and their mother and Daisy (who had brought her swimsuit as well) joined them. I switched out my glasses for my sunglasses, and as I didn't want to get sunscreen all over myself as the sun would be going down in an hour or so, I put a towel around my uncovered head and face like a babushka (to protect from the sun) and leaned back to relax in the deck chairs at the pool while everyone else swam.
I quietly took it all in -- this was a moment trapped in time, a fleeting moment where my wife, her sister, and all of her sister's kids were swimming together in the pool, playing Marco Polo, being kids. Being family. This was likely an experience none of us would ever really be able to have again -- kids grow up and lose interest in things, adults get older and interact with the kids less -- this was an innocent time, a peaceful time, in the tumultuous world around us when everyone could just be who they were and be together. There was nothing on the outside world intruding on this time -- no stress, no worries about travel or bills or other responsibilities -- just the family and the pool.
That was, until another family with a bunch of obnoxious kids came up to the pool area -- and the Canadian kids started fighting with one another about something (I don't know what, I wasn't paying attention) and Daisy's sister told them to get out of the pool, that they were done. That pretty much wrapped up all of the pool time for the night, so we gathered up our stuff and went back to the camper, where dinner was being made and gotten ready.
The kids were eating steak and vegetables and potatoes, pretty standard stuff. Daisy and I had grilled vegetable kebabs and baked potatoes (I think they said they were microwaved, not grilled, but it didn't matter because they were good) and I finally felt a little life return to my body. I had consumed almost nothing the entire day except three energy drinks -- yes, three -- a bottle of diet Mountain Dew, and a few handfuls of potato chips in the car. I was running on fumes and my normally highly-regulated diabetic diet was out the window for most of the trip, given the vegan hot dogs and s'mores and everything else the night before too.
So, we ate -- my shadow at the picnic table with us of course -- and the kids ate, and as they finished they went in small groups over to the showers at the lodge to get cleaned up before bed. Their oldest son (the one who's allergic to everything), who Daisy has always felt a sort of kinship with, was so ashamed he'd gotten in trouble in front of us at the pool that he didn't want to come out and say good night or goodbye to us, and he hid in his bunk. My shadow so desperately wanted to show me her own bunk inside the camper (despite the fact that I'd already seen it) but she couldn't because her brother was in there already and was upset.
As the kids showered in groups after dinner, our brother-in-law showed me the ins-and-outs of the camper's features on the outside -- such as how they drained the sewage and washed out the system, and the hookups for power and water and other things. The camper is not new; it's a 2003 model, so he said -- so it doesn't have a ton of bells and whistles, but it does have a lot of interesting things, including the retractable canopy and the like. Throughout the entire trip he spent a good chunk of time trying to get me interested in the "van life" as they called it, being able to take your home with you wherever you go, and pushing on me really hard (for him) that it's something that the wife and I could and should be doing too, especially if our jobs can be done 100% remotely as long as there's internet access. I have to admit that it's something I'm only partially interested in at best, and percentage-wise it would be a very small percentage -- but I do envy some aspects of it. Daisy and I are very different people than the Canadians. I not only need but require a lot of personal space and quiet time that living in a cramped RV for long stretches of time -- even if it were a large RV -- just wouldn't provide. I need strong, stable internet. I need my cats. I need central air in the summer and a strong furnace in the winter. I can't have any of those things in an RV without it being a $200,000 RV that's tour-bus-sized...which negates the point.
Once the kids had all showered, had said their goodnights, and had gotten into their beds in the camper, it was (finally) just us adults left. It was sort of sad to know that our trip was ending. Well, that our family time was ending, at least -- our trip wasn't over yet, as we still had to get back home. The Canadians were pulling up stakes the next day as well and was starting to journey east to Indiana, which was their primary destination for the trip -- our brother-in-law, who is a pastor, had a religious conference of some sort he was going to. He told me/us what it was at some point, but as it was all about the Jesus the information just went in one atheist ear and out the other with me. Because they're Evangelical, I've tried very hard not to ask the Canadians questions about their religion or why they are so passionate about it, because were I to do so, it would create a lot of drama, as well as probably some animosity and strife between our families, and there's a good chance we'd never see our nieces and nephews again because they wouldn't be allowed to be around us.
The Canadians know that Daisy really isn't religious and is more "spiritual" -- she would say that she can see truth in all religions and appreciate them for what they are -- and I've not made it a secret that I'm an atheist, though I've never come out and said it to them one-on-one. The only time they've ever talked about religion with me is when they once gave me a Bible, when they were leaving for Canada, as a way to thank me for helping them get their stuff packed and moved. At the time, my brother-in-law said something to me to the affect of "we know you're not really into this sort of thing, but you understand we had to try." They personalized it with a message inside the cover for me and Daisy. Daisy was slightly offended by this, but I wasn't at all -- to them, to their religion, this is the greatest showing of love that they could possibly give us -- this is their way, this is their truth. I may not agree with it but I 100% see the love in that action. Love is stronger than words in a book.
We talked about various things in the night hours, once the kids were in bed. I brought up the fact that their second oldest daughter has a very clearly British accent in her tone and inflection most of the time, which made them laugh -- she picked it up from the Harry Potter movies when she was younger and it never really went away, and she has an African instructor of some sort at her church school who was taught British English and has the accent as well, so it sort of stuck -- at this point she's not even doing it on purpose anymore, it's just how she talks.
As an aside, I did the same thing in reverse with my West Virginia accent, as a teenager and into my adult years in college -- I worked very hard to remove it from my inflections and speech patterns for many years, to the point where eventually I was able to eliminate it completely as second nature. I will still slip into it at times when I'm back home or if I'm completely exhausted, and Daisy finds it endlessly amusing when I do. You can take the boy out of West Virginia, but you can't entirely take the West Virginia out of the boy, I guess.
Eventually the topic of conversation came to the Covid pandemic and vaccinations, and this is where it got interesting. None of the Canadians are vaccinated. At all. We knew this beforehand, but bringing this up in conversation is something I knew we'd eventually discuss on our trip.
"We're not anti-vaxxers or anything," our brother-in-law said. "But we're not completely convinced the vaccines have had enough testing or research on them, and then there's [oldest son, who's allergic to everything] to worry about."
Daisy's sister has said in the past (I believe it was last Christmas, via the family phone call) that we were basically making ourselves guinea pigs for the vaccine when we planned to get it and eventually got it, because we were taking a gamble on something untested that we had no idea what it would do to our bodies.
Make no mistake on this, folks -- science knows what it will do to our bodies. Scientists are smarter than us. Scientists, especially vaccine scientists, understand and know that we're not going to die from it, it's not going to change our DNA, it's not going to make us into Jekyll-and-Hyde monsters -- it's going to save lives and prevent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of sicknesses and deaths. Trust the science of it. You don't have to understand it to trust it and believe it.
The Canadians' lack of vaccinations concerned us greatly, but there was nothing we could do about it. The Delta variant is not fucking around, and it's worse and apparently hospitalizing/killing people in way larger numbers (adjusted numbers for clarity vs. vaccinated and unvaccinated folks) compared to the original. Over 90% of active Covid infections in the US now are from the Delta variant.
They went on to explain that their oldest, allergic-to-everything son could be killed by the vaccine because they just aren't sure what's in it or what he'd be allergic to in it. "Is it worth getting the vaccine if it ends up killing my son?" Daisy's sister asked.
Well, no, but...what's stopping y'all from getting it? Also, your son isn't old enough to get it yet anyway. Create your own little herd immunity clan and protect him (and the other younger kids) from it by protecting yourselves.
I didn't say this; I wanted to say it, but it's not my place. Truth be told, I don't know what virus spread is like in Alberta where they live, nor do I know how easy/difficult it is to get the vaccine up there or what it entails. Four of their five children are under 12, which I think is the cutoff age where anyone younger can't get it yet, but if I were a parent of five children during a pandemic, regardless of apprehensions I had about the vaccine, I would absolutely get it just to ensure I had a much stronger chance of being able to stick around and survive for my kids.
Not to mention that, y'know, you're driving through a lot of states and stopping at a lot of places where there are a lot of people, and the US doesn't exactly have the best track record of everyone being immunized either (I've read conflicting reports, but most say something like 70% have at least one dose, which isn't that great -- at the six-month point we should be closer to 90% fully vaxxed). I take everything with a grain of salt, but I guarantee you over the three months that I've now been fully vaccinated, I have been around enough people and in enough situations to where I would've been infected by an infected person at some point were I not vaccinated. It's almost 100% certain I would have, and I guarantee Daisy would have too. There's just so many people not getting the shots.
Anyway.
The conversation quieted down after that and we said our goodnights and goodbyes. They'd very likely be gone by the morning when we got up and pulled out of town to head back to Omaha anyway, so we knew this would be the last time we'd see them before they rolled back our way through Omaha at the beginning of August on their way home. Daisy, in the time since we've returned home, plotted out the days they'd be in and took at least one day of PTO to spend with them while they were here.
We got back in the car and drove once more down the pitch black roads back to Sturgis and to the hotel, through the bighorn sheep crossing areas where I once more chanted my mantra of "no sheep, no sheep, no sheep" as a way to ward them off. Once back at the hotel, we both showered and I actually got some real food (and my second set of pills) in me. Daisy went to bed, and I decompressed a bit out on the balcony in the cool, fresh night air with my phone -- full 5G signal, baby -- before later joining her in bed.
The adventuring of our vacation had ended. Family time was over. Now for the drive back home...
Saturday, July 17:
Homeward bound.
We were up and mobile pretty early on Saturday morning, as we had nothing else keeping us in South Dakota at that point -- we were the last to arrive, and the last to leave. We also had a set itinerary for Saturday for our travels:
1. gas and Blaze Pizza in Rapid City
2. Wall Drug
3. Home by dark.
We were able to stick to this plan pretty closely for the most part.
I will tell you that my least favorite part of any trip is the unloading of the car (from the car to the hotel room) and the re-loading of that stuff all back into the car when we're leaving a hotel. It always seems like we tend to bring ten times the amount of shit we actually need on any given trip, and I'm always looking to find a way to "cut weight," so speak, on a return trip. Deodorant stick is 3/4 gone? Toss it, no need to bring it back home. Three PowerAdes left? Shit, better drink those, it's less to carry -- etc. I hate the unloading and reloading with every fiber of my being, and I hate it more when the hotel doesn't have the luggage-mover dolly things, so everything we carry must be physically carried.
I was not feeling very well on Saturday morning. My stomach was out of sorts and more than anything else, I just felt weak. I'd chalk it up to low blood sugar or something, but I was fine there. Once we were on the road, it slowly got a little better. We stopped and got gas in Rapid City and made our way to the local Blaze Pizza down the street (in the same plaza) to get food on our stomachs before the main drag of the trip.
For those of you unfamiliar with Blaze Pizza, imagine a Subway or a Chipotle, but with pizza -- you go in there, pick what you want, they make -- via assembly line -- and oven-fire the pizza in front of you, and then you eat it fresh out of the oven. You can either make your own or go with one of their menu pizzas, and add/remove whatever you want to/from it. We like the place because it is very similar to a chain we used to eat at all the time called Uncle Maddio's, which disappeared from Omaha in probably 2017 or so. We also like it because they have vegan cheeses and because Daisy confirmed via a lot of research that their crusts are vegan, as well as their sauces and the like. I don't have problems eating cheese or eggs as a vegetarian, I'm just meat-free, so as long as it doesn't have any dead animals in it, I'm good to go as well.
This particular Blaze Pizza trip wasn't that memorable for me, honestly. I hadn't been feeling well (as mentioned) and I got some pizza that was really garlicky and I don't even remember what it was, to be honest with you. It was good, but it wasn't something that I need to order again the next time we're there. I also got an order of their cheese bread, because it was new and looked good -- and it was, but meh, I was mostly underwhelmed by a lot of it this time around because I was exhausted and not feeling well. I saved about half of it and brought it all home. Daisy made her own pizza and put tons of olives and peppers and artichokes and all sorts of other stuff on it -- she also took about half of it with her (she would later finish it in the car during our drive).
The drive itself was long. I don't know why it seems like it takes so much longer to get home from South Dakota than it does to get there. Perhaps it's because this time around we were making the trip in daylight and there was more traffic on the road, including accidents -- we passed two nasty wrecks on the way up to Rapid City from Sturgis -- or perhaps it's just because we were both tired of being out and about and just wanted to be home. Regardless, the trip seemed so. much. longer this time around than it did driving up there in the nighttime hours three days prior.
We came up on the town of Wall, and Wall Drug, by probably 11:30. Now, the last time we went to Wall Drug, it was early evening in late May before Memorial Day, on a weekday. There were people there but it wasn't awful. This time it was mid-summer, in July, on a beautiful Saturday morning in peak tourist season. This translated to holy Jesus, people everywhere, let's park a quarter mile from the complex. We were lucky, actually, that we got there when we did and were able to park so close -- when we exited the building an hour later there was zero parking left in the lot.
I will forever say that Wall Drug is an experience. For some, it is a state of mind. It is the most South Dakota thing about South Dakota, in my opinion. If you have no concept of what Wall Drug is and/or have never been there, I strongly encourage you to read up on its history and everything it has to offer. Yes, it is a sort of tourist-trappy place, but it is a vast complex filled with shops and a giant cafe/restaurant, a museum, outdoor sculptures and statues, and for people who love collectibles and kitsch, it is a delightful experience.
Daisy is not a fan of Wall Drug. She indulges me in my love of the place, and goes along for the ride, but if there's a personal hell for Daisy, it's Wall Drug on a Saturday morning in the peak of tourist season in the Black Hills.
Why do I like Wall Drug so much? Well, for one, I love tourist trap places, and I love gift shops/souvenir shops. Nearly everywhere we go on vacations or trips, I always make sure to bring home some sort of souvenir -- usually t-shirts, coffee mugs, keychains, stuff of that nature. I budget for it when we travel (it's the primary reason I cleared off so much space on my credit cards before we left Omaha). When I wear the shirts or use the mugs/keychains/what-have-you, I have a tangible reminder of the memories and experiences I've had on those trips -- where I was and what I was doing when I got those items. One of my biggest regrets about our trip to New Orleans (five years ago this week, actually) is that I didn't bring home more souvenirs from the city.
Again, as South Dakota has a pull on me, I am deeply fascinated and amused by its kitschy souvenirs and shirts. When we were there in 2019, I bought a mug (which is so big that I end up just using it for soup), a Mount Rushmore wolf shirt (don't you judge me) and one of the softest, most comfortable t-shirts I've ever owned -- a purple soft cotton shirt that says "South Dakota, Est. 1889" with the backdrop of a mountain range on it. That shirt I've worn so much because it's so comfortable, to the point where it's starting to wear out. I told Daisy that my primary focus this time around was to get several more of them, if I could find them.
I could not.
I searched every shop in Wall Drug from top to bottom, and while I found other shirts by the same company, none of them were in similar designs or colors and, more importantly, none of them were in my size. Some of the little shops had stuff I was mildly interested in, but wasn't going to pay tourist prices for (I rather liked some of the mugs and knives and other little things, but eh). I was frustrated and sad, and Daisy needed to use the bathroom, so I leaned against a wall amongst the throngs of people clogging up everywhere they could and sighed.
Scanning the room for anything interesting, the opposite wall caught my eye. Against it, in stacks, were woven blankets of multiple colors. Woven as in, looked western, looked native-made, looked like horse blankets with tassels and the like. I walked over to look at them. They were thick, heavy, and sturdy -- some in red and yellow, some in blue and white, green and white, yellow and brown, etc. They were the type of blanket you'd pay $50 or more for in some trendy shop. Wall Drug, decidedly not a trendy shop, had them for $11.99 each. I immediately picked up one of the blue and white ones and one of the green and white ones -- the two best color choices, in my opinion -- and bought them.
In hindsight, I should've purchased probably five or six more for Christmas presents for family, because they're gorgeous and were an amazing deal. I decided to keep one for us and give the other to the parents -- who aren't really the type of people to go to tourist shops to look for such things. I didn't know which one I'd choose to keep and which one I'd choose to give to them -- I liked both the blue and the green equally.
Daisy returned from the bathroom, saw the big bag I had, and rolled her eyes, asking what I'd bought. When I showed her and explained to her my reasoning, she mostly understood.
"Whichever one you keep will be a very pretty blanket for the back of the couch," she said, dryly.
We ventured outside (something we didn't get to do on our last trip there) and went into the museums and open statue/sculpture area, where there are various different photo op sorts of things, like a jackalope statue, a rabbit statue, a full-size stuffed/mounted bison, etc.
...As you can see.
In the building with the museum, there was also a (closed) arcade, and to the side of that, one last souvenir shop. In it, aside from a T-Rex skull cast...
...I was able to find two shirts, of questionable taste and morality:
I will state, for the record, that I have zero idea what message the buffalo shirt is attempting to convey.
In the time since we've returned from the trip, I have asked multiple people of multiple races and ethnic backgrounds to interpret what they believed the creators' intention was to be for that artwork, and I have yet to receive a satisfying answer to that question. It is:
1. A buffalo
2. Wearing aviators and headphones
3. With dreads and beads in the dreads
4. In Rastafarian colors.
Like, my only real thoughts on it are "well, South Dakota did just legalize the weeds across the board this month" but other than that...yeah, I got nothin'. It seems to be culturally appropriating at least three different things at once, and it is so bizarre I couldn't not purchase it.
The sasquatch shirt I at least understand.
As an aside, Daisy and I saw a lot of sasquatch merchandise/souvenirs when we were up there this time around, at various places like Wall Drug, but also in gas stations and truckstops -- I didn't particularly think much of it until I started seeing it almost everywhere we went. I figured that they'd chosen the sasquatch as a mascot of some sort, similar to the Jackalope, and didn't think much else about it.
Upon returning home, I did a little research, and apparently there are a lot of bigfoot sightings in the Black Hills -- as in, it's really common -- but it's not reported to the press/news media by most people who see them because said people don't want to be thought of as loons and don't want to draw a lot of attention to the area or themselves, or attract "bigfoot hunters." Now, mind you, I've seen a lot of weird shit over the years, and I have been pretty far out into the wilderness in many different states and places, and I have never seen anything that would lead me to believe that there's any bigfoots (bigfeet?) out there -- but I mean, South Dakota is South Dakota. It is very isolated outside the towns and small cities, and it is very much a state filled with a vast amount of wilderness. If there's anywhere I've been that could support a bigfoot population, it's the wilderness of the Black Hills. That's not to say I believe they exist, but people who are seeing them are seeing something, and apparently bears are really quite rare in the region -- there are no known bear populations of any sort in the Dakotas. Soooo...there's that.
Anyway.
I purchased those two shirts, and satisfied enough with them, we left Wall Drug and got back on the highway towards Omaha.
I will add here that Daisy also felt what I will call the pull of the kitsch and bought a decorative plate with a moose on it for $10. It's now on display in our living room.
It was a relatively uneventful drive. I saw maybe three pronghorn along the side of the road or back up in the fields, but nothing else. I saw almost no real wildlife the entire trip, actually. Maybe all the bigfoot are eating them.
We stopped someplace in the middle of nowhere for gas, at a small truckstop place, where I was able to find yet two more types of energy drink I'd never seen anywhere before -- a new mango Monster for me, and a new type of Rockstar for Daisy. I wish I would've had more time or energy to look around for more souvenir-ish things, but I didn't. I just wanted to be home.
That was our driving force behind the entire drive back, actually -- we just wanted to be home. I wanted to be able to fall asleep in my chair, to sleep in my own bed, to listen to my podcasts or play a game on my computer. To eat real food, to watch Netflix, to chill the fuck out. We'd been running for days, as evidenced by just how long these two posts are, and both of us wanted it all to stop.
In southeastern South Dakota, moving back into Iowa in the evening hours, we drove through a light rain/thunderstorm as the sun was setting, and it cast a beautiful rainbow across the sky in front of us as we were driving. It was almost as if it was the light at the end of a very long tunnel.
We pulled into Omaha shortly after dark to find the house and our cats as we had left all of it/them. We let everyone know we were home, unloaded the car, and I finally ate the rest of my pizza from earlier in the day. We took care of the cats and I began doing load after load of laundry to get the smell and dirt of campground and hotel off of all of our belongings. We also showered to cleanse our bodies of trip germs and trip sweat. I don't remember much after that. I don't even know when I went to bed.
Sunday, July 18:
Home.
I'd taken Sunday night off because I needed some rest time. It was part of my original PTO I'd put in for the trip. I told my boss that I didn't know when we'd be back (originally, I really didn't) but I knew that regardless that I'd need a breathing-space day, a buffer day, to reset myself and get ready to return to work.
During daylight that Sunday, we went over to the parents' to see them and deliver the blanket I'd bought for them -- I decided to keep the blue one, and gave them the green one. Normally I'd pick green over blue (it's the Slytherin in me) but for some reason I thought the parents would enjoy the green one more. I once again lamented that I hadn't bought several more of them. The parents were fine; they'd arrived back home on Friday and had been in "recovery mode" ever since.
After the parents', we stopped for groceries to restock the house for the next week, and brought them home. Due to the size of our small garage, we always have to unload the car in the driveway and carry the bags into the house, and then put the car in the garage.
"Hold up," I told Daisy, looking over at our trees in the front yard, which we could now see in daylight.
"What?" she asked.
"I need to take a look at this," I told her, stepping out of the car and walking around the second tree in our yard -- the one that wasn't damaged by the storm and barely lost any branches at all.
"This other tree is cracked in half," I told her.
"What?"
"The big tree, the one on the left, it's splitting right down the middle."
The trunk on the larger, undamaged tree forks about halfway up it into two large trunks, which split off into a few smaller ones at it goes up. At the base of the first split, and down into the singular trunk, the tree is quite literally cracked in half. It's not a deep crack, it's not a "this tree is going to fall tomorrow" sort of crack, but it is very noticeable and very indicative of recent damage -- such as the 70+ mph winds that were hitting us during that storm. It won't survive another storm of that caliber -- another storm with strong winds will break it the rest of the way and it will come down, either onto our house or onto the street/neighbors' homes and cars, depending on how it falls.
It has to be removed. As in, completely removed, cut down and taken away. In the time since, Daisy has gotten some estimates -- it's going to be roughly between $850-1000 to get it done, and we'll likely need to have it done ASAP in the event another bad storm rolls through (apparently, for Omaha, severe storm chances and tornado chances rise in August, who knew?).
It's not like we ever have a spare grand to just blow on tree removal, by the way. If we did have that sort of money on a regular basis, I'd have a car and/or probably a fancy gaming system. Adding insult to it is that the tree is a silver maple, which is worthless for lumber or to loggers because the wood is too soft to use for pretty much anything. Real estate developers plant silver maples all around neighborhoods they're building because they grow quickly, are cheap, and are great shade trees -- all while being not useful for much else. They tend to cause a lot of problems once they get aged and too big -- such as this one. The zoo won't even take branches/cuttings from silver maples to feed the herbivores there; that's how useless they are.
This brings us back up to the present, pretty much. We have a licensed arborist who is coming to take down the tree over the next few days, and life has basically returned to normal here in Omaha. But, that South Daktota trip was a wild ride, and I hope you all enjoyed reading about it.
I will now return you to your regularly scheduled posts...
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