Run to the Games: Montana to Minneapolis

The last few days have been a whirlwind tour of the US. We left Missoula and drove through Butte (a former mining town) and headed to Bozeman where we met up with Tamma and Austin. Tamma ran with Tom, Peter and I in college and I don't think any of us had seen her in over 8 months. We had some lunch and then were on our way to Yellowstone National Park. This is when the first big failure on my part happened on the trip. In all of the changing of cars I had left my sunglasses case on the roof. Little did I know this when we tried to get onto the freeway and they fell off breaking the case and my regular glasses getting run over by a car behind us. I still am without the ability to see as soon as it gets dark but hopefully this will be remedied here in Minneapolis. We arrived in Yellowstone hoping to find a camp ground in the park with some space.....sadly all the spaces were taken. We drove through the park missing Old Faithful but we did see some Bison about 3 feet from the car. I was shocked at how huge and yet developed the park was. I had no idea people lived in the park year round or that you could rent hotel rooms and even get gas inside the park. The thing that stands out about this trip other than the constant danger of the car dying is that the west is so beautiful. We drove through the park stopping for photos and exited out the eastern side in the dark in search of a camp ground that wasnt full. Around 20 miles later we found one and set up camp. For our first attempt as a group things well very well even with me being no help due to my night blindness(blindness is a little strong but it still really makes it tough when the only glasses you have are sunglasses). Our dinner was cans of soup cooked over a campfire and some Wyoming beer. The four of us shared our tent and in the morning peter made some coffee which I hear was really good. We packed up and headed off for Devils tower. We arrived again after dusk and set up the camp after driving around in circles for the best spot. This time camp set up was much faster and dinner was hot dogs, s'mores and wine. The camp ground was situated about 2 miles from the base of Devils tower with a great view. The next morning we got up and prepared to hike around Devils Tower which was very touristy but really spectacular. Also the area around devils tower is known for its prairie dogs. This days drive was the shortest as we were just hopping the border to South Dakota and the town of Deadwood. Next week is Sturgis and the bikers were already out in full force. Last year Sturgis got 850,000 bikers. We did a quick tour of Deadwood and the town of Lead where Lauren's family friend has a cabin in which we stayed. It was a very nice little 3 story cottage right next to a ski mountain which would be a lot of fun in the winter. We dropped off our stuff and consolidated to a single car and headed off to Mount Rushmore. Everyone told me to temper my expectations so I was skeptical at first. When we got there I thought it was spectacular. We did our on version of the photo then headed off to the Crazy Horse monument which is unfinshed as we pulled up it was about 3 times the price of Rushmore so we decided to take a pass and head back up for some dinner and gambling. Deadwood has been known for its gambling for around a 100 yrs. We walked into a bar looking completely out of place with our fake tattoos and not wearing leather anything. The bikers stared but eventually went on not caring about us except thinking we were out of place. After losing some money we moved onto another bar where Bill Hickok got shot and then back to the cabin. We got about 6 hours of sleep before we decided to head off to Minneapolis. Our first stop was Wall Drug supposedly the worlds biggest drugstore.....letdown. It was not that interesting. I would skip it. Next we headed to the worlds only Corn Palace. Its not really all made of corn so it was too a let down. Its actually a stadium which the local college uses for basketball games and plays. Interesting but super corny....my one pun for the day. From there it was a straight shot to Toms house in Minneapolis. After arriving around 9 Tom's mom greeted us and we had our first Minnesota beer and then passed out from the 10 hour driving day.