"This is the Moment I've Been Waiting for My Whole Life."

In case it wasn't already marked on your calendars, this past Monday was my 23rd birthday!  To celebrate, my BFF from St. Ben's came to visit and we road tripped it out to Mt. Rushmore.  The drive is only about 3 hours, but it was incredibly windy (as always) and driving I90 wasn't super awesome.  But since Kara's family never subjected her to the horror that is an SD road trip, we had plenty of stops to make.

The first stop was the Badlands!  Since I am my father's daughter, I emailed Kara an itinerary for our trip weeks prior.  The Badlands weren't on there which prompted her to ask "can you handle going off the schedule?"  You betcha.

We met some nice ladies at the Badlands sign who took our picture.  Then we piled back into the Buick and headed on to Wall Drug!  If you've never been, go.  It is the land of kitschy crud and I think it's fabulous.  There's so much to make fun of and such good people watching! And where else can you ride a giant jackelope?  And Kara almost got sprayed by the water fountains in the ground :)

Now onto the final hour of driving and Kara falls asleep.  What good is bringing along a friend if she's not even going to talk to you???  Just kidding :)  But she did wake up in time to see Mt. Rushmore emerge from behind the Black Hills!

One thing I noticed at Mt. Rushmore was that the Native American perspective was pretty much ignored.  No mention that white dude completely defaced a sacred site with their "art".  Pssh, we just won't even mention it.  Granted tourists probably don't want to get into an ideological debate about manifest destiny and opression whilst on family vacay, but it's an important issue especially at a site that is touted as representative of our national identity.

We hiked around the woods and said "hi" to George from every angle and then drove back into Rapid City for some groceries before heading to our campsite.  We stayed at Palmer Gulch KOA which is the same campground I stayed at with Baby Bro and the 'rents 14 years ago.  My dad thought that was hilarious.  But it was totally worth the $9 resort fee!  Just after we showed up, there was a free wine tasting.  Then one of the KOA slaves drove us back to our campsite with our firewood so we didn't have to schlep it the whole way.  Score.

Kara was clear that she was just there to look pretty and be naturey.  She's the beauty, I, apparently, was the brawn.  So I got to gettin' setting up the tent, splitting wood (and not injuring myself!) and cooking dinner. 2 s'mores and a couple glasses of wine later and we were ready for bed...at 9:30pm.  Starting 23 off with a bang.

The next morning we packed up and stopped to hike in the national forrest for a bit.  Then onto lunch at the Firehouse Brewing Co. in Rapid.  Hist Pres follows me every where.  The restaurant was an adapted historic fire house and retained all the character defining features.  And they brew there own beer!  We decided to skip any more kitsch and just get on the road.  After ice cream for dinner and a quick tour of Pierre, we were ready to crash.  Being naturey is exhausting.