Day 16: "A Few More Stops"

"Road rage, twisters, and dumpy bungalows… you guys, this is awesome..."

States: Montana - Wyoming - South Dakota
Miles: 786.5
Weather: Hot and Rainy

$$$
Gas: 128.10
Pizza: 10.70
Motel: 37

Total: 175.80

Signatures: +0
58/100

An aquatic sunrise: The blue grandeur of the morning that most of our people miss. I wander through the brisk air alone taking in the flood of the esthetic milieu. The river heard throughout the night is a crystalline mirror reflecting the fiery white leaking over the horizon and streaming into the pearly black riptide. The stars are slowly closing their eyes as the birds and insects sing dawn’s hymn. I walk back through the still sleeping trees to Matt and Phil… I wait standing on the bench for the alarm to go off… a loud bang echoes in the distance, disrupting the whispering winds and causing havoc amongst a flock of birds in the distance. The phone goes off a minute later and we are on the road. A successful Camp n’ Run. The sky is beaten with an array of colours: violets, blues, and tints of green. As soon as we cascade through the womb of the mountain a fiery façade explodes among our shadowed faces. This is what morning is, an element of its own. The majority of us are enclosed by walls when the eye is shaken or simply it is that we wake up late. Sadly I’m among them, but this morning is the first we’ve been able to see this entire trip.

So we ride, just a day of nothing planned, just like yesterday. No plans, but of course, events. Today we see something most unusual on the highway. We’re out taking a pic of the Wyoming sign and we hear honks from across the meridian separating the lanes. We get a glimpse of a Maroon Ford Taurus driving on the wrong side, fast! We instantly hop in and I hit the gas, keen on seeing what’s up. All three of us are pretty speculative about what’s happening and just want to see what this person is doing. We soon are riding parallel to them which turned out to be a “her”. They are driving fast and we see semi’s driving by calling someone on their phones (the police we’re guessing). We see cars changing lanes ASAP when they see this crazy coming at them. There was a truck pulling a little motor home that couldn’t get out of the way. We gasped a little, but the lady swerved off the side of the road and burned out. We saw smoke and she tried to get back on and keep going! INSANE! We called the cops but they already knew, we just gave them a more specific location. This lady could have killed someone! So we drove on losing her. We saw about five cops racing the direction she was last seen and that was that.

We drive on. We decided in Wyoming to see Devil’s Tower: a monstrous butte out in the middle of nowhere (how did it get there?). It was typical except for the fact that we drove by two ‘mirage’ like tornadoes, which were clearly there. There were also some grey twisters attempting birth but we noticed they miscarried instead. That was a little creepy, but we had to see this butte! It rained! We hadn’t felt rain since day 4 when we slept in the middle of nowhere and hadn’t seen any since day 1 on the way to St. Louis. O yeah, hopes all is well with the storms back home.

Next stop: Rapid City. Let’s face it, we’re cheap. Yes, we saw Mt. Rushmore but we didn’t enter, because it cost money. It wasn’t as big as I thought it was though. It was cool though but I’m sure if it wasn’t raining the four faces would’ve been a little happier too. J We then saw Crazy Horse. Of course we saw it only from a distance, because it cost too much to go up close and personal. The story is the Sioux Indians have been carving this thing for sixty years and are still in the making.

So where are we now? Sleeping wise that is. Well… hehe… no freaking out, but you know those movies with the flea-ridden motels that are sort of dumpy that people stay at just for some rest? Yeah that’s where we are. It’s a little eerie, smells like smoke, one bed, missing fire alarm, and the bathroom has no fan. It’s perfect! It stopped raining. People are hitting the hay and so are we. Mighty night!

MJ