We're Almost Home

We last updated in Indiana...before we fell asleep. Well, tried to sleep anyway. Living in Washington, I thought I knew what a thunder and lightning storm was. There is some rain, 5 or 6 bolts of lightning and the thunder that accompanies it. What I learned is that Washington lightning storms are kinda like...buying french bread in America, eating california style pizza in Virginia, or a philly cheesesteak sandwich in Kansas. I guess what I'm trying to say is lightning storms in Indiana are TERRIFYING...especially when viewing them from inside a tent. Literally...lightning every 10 seconds and the thunder did not stop for half an hour. So we didn't get much sleep and when we decided to pack up in the morning, everything was soaked and dirty. great.

The day after Indiana was not to exciting. We drove through Chicago, which is an extremely ugly city. Everything there seemed dirty. The only redeeming point of interest in that area was how they handled their "service" stations along the toll road. They were these big archways that went over the freeway and had restaurants and such inside. It kinda felt like you were in an airport. We had chinese food in one and then continued on to Minnesota. After our experiance in Indiana, we were not looking forward to camping outside again so we upgraded to a little cabin site and slept indoors while hanging our tent out to dry a little while we went to explore the area. We had arrived really early that day and since we were sleeping indoors we decided to see if there were any movies we wanted out and watch them in the cabin. We bought Men in Black and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because they were 5 bucks and watched those.

The next day we headed towards Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills. South Dakota is an interesting state...every city in South Dakota has something that is the most amazing thing you will ever see and they will advertise it thoroughly. We visited Wall Drug...which you start seeing signs for 355 miles away and then every 5 miles from that point. You would think it was a lot cooler than it was. However, it's just a block of old west looking building, lots of cowboys, and a maze. We bought some ice cream...which I guess was pretty good. We did manage to pull ourselves away and continue on to Rushmore. Again, we got there pretty early so we had 3-4 hours to visit Keystone, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Horse (kinda). I say kinda because we didn't want to pay the 20 bucks to get in when you can see the actual mountain from the road. Crazy Horse is interesting because it's been being built for nearly 100 years and it isn't close to being done. I saw it when I was in junior high and the only difference between then and now is there is a hole in the mountain where is armpit is gonna be. Mount Rushmore was Mount Rushmore...it's surprisingly small in real life. Keystone is another old west themed town. It's...not exciting. Merrilee bought some black hills gold...from the black hills.

We upgraded to a cabin again that night and, for the second night in a row, had problems with our internet so we couldn't update. Did I mention that earlier? We didn't update the last few days cause KOA internet access is spotty at best.

Anywho, we started driving through Montana. Again, not exciting. We intended on upgrading to a cabin site in Misoula, MO, but they were booked. So, we decided that we could either find a hotel, sleep in a wet tent, or drive through till we couldn't drive anymore. We decided on the last option and hit Spokane around 9 o'clock. At which point we figured we could make it to Seattle before 2am, so we just drove through. We made it into Merrilees Mom's house around 1:30 and crashed after a quick cuddle with our kitties. We plan on trying to clean up the tent today, doing our laundry and then heading ho e tommorrow morning. We're excited to be getting home, even though that means we have to go back to work :-(

-Jason