<<Note: pictures are not yet uploaded to the website but may be viewed on my Facebook or Myspace accounts.>>
It’s always hard to go back to work after a long weekend…especially so when you make a stretch a 3-day holiday weekend into 6, and in Noah’s case start a new job.
First the job…Floorcrafters laid-off Noah last week claiming financial hardships due to the current economic situation. So now, Noah is working for a former boss (one he worked for in CA who now lives in CO) and looking for stable work. I am looking for ways to catch Floorcrafters breaking DOL regulations. So far I think I have them in 2 areas, but Noah doesn’t want to burn bridges. Meh.
That lovely news came 2 days before my birthday (Happy birthday to me!), 1 day after we bought airplane tickets to fly out to California for Noah’s brother’s wedding in October and on the eve of our road trip to Wyoming and South Dakota. More on the road trip – it’s a much better story and not so depressing. 🙂
Our friend Sandy came to visit from California over Labor Day weekend for a) my birthday, b) because she likes Colorado and wanted to get a change of scenery for a while, and c) it was a good excuse to stretch a long weekend. She got in Wednesday night and Friday morning we left home for South Dakota. Mind you, there is a whole lotta nothing in-between here and there…just field and field of hay and 1 or 2 trees. Seriously no trees until you get to the Black Hills (check out the pictures, there’s one of a lone tree in the middle of the prairie).
Since we left early, we got into Rapid City with plenty of daylight. Although we didn’t quite make it into town before we Noah was pulled over by a local trooper. Apparently the speed limit was 65, not 75. Oops. Because we were “touristas” the trooper let Noah go with a warning, but not before he asked Noah to go sit in his car. Sandy and I remained in our vehicle and were desperately trying to figure out why Noah needed to go sit in the cop’s car. Very odd indeed. We snuck a picture of the cop behind our car. Turns out, the cop had some news crew riding along with him and the whole thing was on video. The trooper even asked Noah if he wanted to say anything to the camera…Noah respectfully declined.
Now, that we knew what the speed limit was (there were no signs…seriously folks) we continued on our merry way, checked into the hotel and then back-tracked to Mount Rushmore. Rushmore was beyond neat, I got got to kiss Teddy’s giant head, Sandy shot Lincoln and Noah picked Jefferson’s nose. Just as cool as the carving was were the mountain goats walking around the roads and parking structure. It is very possible I took the same amount or more pictures of them than the mountain we paid to see. After Rushmore we drove to Crazy Horse. Not worth the money you pay to get in…but at least we can tell our grandkids…great-grandkids (? – whoever is alive when the mountain is actually finished) that we contributed to its completion.
Day 2 we went to Wall, got our free ice water, then headed out to the Badlands. It was very hot and very windy…seemed fitting for such a neat/desolate area. Lava didn’t like the heat at all. The plains were neat, I took a video of the wind blowing the hay/prairie grass like ripples in water, but I would not want to live there. Or on any prairie for that matter. I need trees and mountains…the ability to know whether I’m looking East or West. That morning when we were preparing to leave the hotel, Sandy and I thought we were looking East, only to have the GPS inform us that our “East” was actually “North”. Stupid flat land. We drove by a soddy (in the pictures), but were too cheap to pay to go into the buildings. Our last stop for the day was Cabela’s. I also just found out they’re building one in CO. Yup, that’s right. It’s okay to be jealous, I know you are. 🙂
Day 3 was spent driving to Sturgis with a stop at a joke of a petrified forest (kinda crazy to believe that South Dakota was once a lush forest with marshes). Sandy and I asked the woman at the gift center if any of the trees were still standing or just piles of material on the ground. She said you can never find petrified trees still standing. We told her about the petrified forest in NorCal. She was shocked and somewhat annoyed that we didn’t want to pay to see their piles. Sturgis was um…not what we expected…neither was Deadwood. So we drove through both towns and continued on to Devil’s Tower.
Now Devil’s Tower is worth the money you pay to get into the park! Wow was that thing cool! Of course we would never climb it, but we did hike around it’s base (1.3 miles) and took lots of pictures! Saw some deer, chipmunks, people working their way to the top of the rock. Be sure to check out those pictures!
Funny thing…on our way back to CO we stopped in some podunk town in WY for dinner. We planned on Pizza Hut but the GPS location was a dirt lot. Apparently pizza isn’t too popular, so we settled on Subway. That’s not the funny part. This is, while paying for her food Sandy realized she did not have her ID. Turns out she left it at a gas station in South Dakota when Noah and her walked to it (next to the hotel) to buy some wine coolers the night before. Ooops. This was Sunday, and with Monday being a holiday there was no way it could be shipped to CO in time for Sandy to use it to board her flight Tuesday night. So what other choice did we have but to turn around and drive back into South Dakota (we were about 2 hours out of the state) and back through Deadwood. The added 4 hours got us in at a nice 2am Monday morning, but that extra leg gave us the opportunity to avoid deer in the road and watch lightning in the distance. Thanks Sandy! 🙂 Good thing it was a holiday and none of us had anything strenuous to do that day.
So that’s our trip in a nut shell. Next “vacation” – California in October. But I’m sure I’ll find something to blog about before then.