we planned to spend all three days in SD, but due to some things coming up, we only had two days, and i wouldn't change it for anything! it was so fun, and i went with the perfect people! saturday morning, my friends leah, diana, conner, and i headed to mount rushmore at 3 in the morning. we had ten and a half hours to drive, and we are all huge america/history nerds, so we listened to the america playlist on spotify and had the most amazing book ever called America: A Patriot's Handbook, from which we read speeches and inaugural addresses. it was the best car ride ever. also, freedom by akon was our theme song for the trip. whenever it came on everyone stopped and sang it, it was beautiful.
we got to south dakota and decided i'm moving there because it is SO beautiful. the forests and the farmlands, horses and cows were everywhere, and imagine it when it snows! and the drive up to mount rushmore from the the main street! swoon! we spent saturday afternoon at the big heads and the museum, we were pretty tired and hungry afterwards, so we decided to drive to our hotel.
we were a little bummed because we had to choose a hotel that was about an hour and a half away because we waited so long to book it. who knew that so many people would want to go to south dakota for labor day?! anyway, we had a couple different options that were all about a half hour away, so we chose one that was east of keystone because it was right by badland national park in case we wanted to visit there, too. as we were driving up to the hotel in wall, sd, there was literally a billboard every 30 feet advertising a drugstore called wall drug, right by our hotel. the power of good advertising drove us to the wall drug literally five minutes before it closed. we peeked inside and decided to go back the next day.
we went swimming and then planned to watch national treasure (the second one because they go to mount rushmore of course) but we all fell asleep two minutes into the movie.
the next morning we probably spent three hours at wall drug buying souvenirs that we needed. they have like twenty souvenir shops packed into one and it's full of native american things and cowboy things and basically now it is my dream to live in wall, south dakota and have a farm and go to wall drug every day. they have old fashioned candy and donuts and basically a cowboy mall with boot stores and hat stores and books stores full of books about native americans, cowboys, and south dakota/wyoming. in the back of the store they have a big area full of places to take pictures, and you better believe we took pictures. so, yes, three hours later we headed back to mount rushmore to finish the day there. we went to the sculpture's studio and the gift shop (you know those suckers that gift shops are designed for, the ones who spend way too much money in souvenir shops, yeah that's me. and i just love them and can spend hours looking at them, they are like little museums themselves!) and soaked in as much of those big heads as we could (after we read more america facts in the car, of course).
around 5 that evening we started back to provo. the trip was quite uneventful, except when we were listening to "get out of my dreams and into my car" by billy ocean, we had a little too much fun and i got my first speeding ticket ever. i'm a criminal! i have a record! ahhhhhhhhh. i got really lucky the ticket was pretty cheap and the cop lady was very nice and was making jokes with us, so i felt better about it all and we continued on. about 12:30 in the morning we had to switch drivers, and it was my job to keep the driver awake, so we were almost delirious by 3 in the morning when we got back to provo. luckily we had no trouble driving back, and there was no traffic. when we had finally made it to university avenue, we had barely gotten off the highway and the speed limit is still 55. everyone was asleep except for diana and i who were slap happy and i see the outline of two HUGE stags right in the middle of our lane. it was so dark it's a blessing i even saw them. we were only about fifty feet from them when i saw them and diana didn't see them. i slapped my hands over my eyes and screamed "oh my gosh there's deer!" and by some miracle maneuver by diana she swerved the car around the deer. we were still going 55 and so it's a blessing that 1. we managed to avoid the deer and 2. we didn't flip when she swerved because needless to say everyone was awake and there was some major over correction because we were going so fast and the deers were so close to us when i saw them. a whole roadtrip without any problems and then five minutes from home we would have been wrecked. the car would have been totaled and there's no way diana and i wouldn't have been hurt because two huge deers would have smashed into our window.
we had the best trip ever, and i'm so grateful for america, friends who are so willing to drive basically for a whole day just to spend a day at mount rushmore and who love doing american/history things with me and three day weekends. next time, we're going to washington dc!
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