South Dakota

I'm really terrible about self motivation. Its a serious problem, which is why I'm glad I'm not moving to a place to live alone.

I really am sorry about not updating this more. I feel guilty about it.

 In the form on an apology here are those pictures I promised.

Here's Hannah!

And Rebekah! That may or may not be how her name is spelled. You get the idea though.

Told you they were sickeningly adorable.

Oh! And I never posted the picture Karla Redepenning took with me!

She had me drive my bike in front of her beautiful garden right before I left.

Back to what I haven't talked about already. The rest of Saint Paul was fun. I saw the Mall of America with Heather, where we mostly just bugged the people at Marbles, a brain enhancing game store, and played with massage chairs. I'm not a huge fan of malls, because they're mostly just over priced clothes, but it was still a fun experience.

Driving in the pouring rain to get to the mall of America was not so fun. But it was worth it.

We also saw some truly awesome wall art.

Both of these pictures were part of a larger mural, but cars were blocking the rest of it. These were the best bits anyway.

After the rain cleared up I took advantage of my brief window of semi decent weather to head out to South Dakota. Funny thing was that as soon as I crossed the state border the rain all vanished. There were signs that the rain had passed that way before I got there though. The chief sign was that my road now passed under a river. I saw an SUV try and ford it anyway and they got stuck in the middle, so I sought an alternate route. A very helpful local, who had just recently stopped riding, told me about the route he had taken to Sturgis many times before. Don't get me wrong, I was extremely grateful. But gravel roads suck. It evened itself out by showing my this gem though:

I know its not that funny in reality, but at the time I found it hysterical.

The plains are flat. Very, very flat. For miles. I've never really just stared at endless horizon before. It was neat. Then it got really boring. But it did make for a spectacular sunset, which helped with the mindless boredom.

I know I'm not a great photographer, but I found the effect of the sunset on the flood waters and roads really cool looking at the time. All that water you see it actually about a foot deep in fields, not true lakes.

Or, you know, supposed to be there at all.

While seeing the sunset was great, it did mean that by the time I got to Howard South Dakota to find Rose Mary Sanderson's house it was very much night time.

My grandma has this lovely friend named Rose Mary who very graciously opened her house(and excellent tea selection) to me. She was a wonderful host and helped me plot out the best route to Rapid city and my grandma's house.

She also has a bunch of cats, but they were all cute and more or less friendly, so that was fun. One of them slept with me, but I don't think he was supposed to. I didn't mind.

After I left her house, I had another very long day ahead of me. South Dakota got pretty once I was near the Black Hills, but good Lord, so much of that state was mind numbingly boring. I listened to an entire book on tape. And also realized that all my books on tape are missing about a tenth of their content from file corruption when I transferred them between iPods. I hate Apple so, so much.

I mean seriously, why make it so hard to move files from an iPod to the computer? Its still possible quite easily, its just frustrating and ends up making me hate Apple even more, without actually stopping me. Just inconveniencing me. Big companies need to learn that a good reputation will reduce people taking advantage of them a lot better than making all their users jump through hoops, by using a deterrent more powerful than any evil inconvenience. Guilt! Small companies and musicians have shown that by simply being honest and open with their product, people generally like them so much for it that they don't steal their stuff.

Sorry about that. Kind of a rant that I don't think any of my readers will care that much about.

Right. The trip. South Dakota. So, I got to grandma's condo in Rapid City, took a swim and soaked in a jacuzzi. It made up for the long day in  spades. The following day we went to church with Uncle Larry, but his wife was home sick with a nasty sore throat. After church we went out to the house my Mom bought near Hill City, which is next to Larry's house. Its really nice! Except for the whole fly thing. Great woodwork, and I like the stone fireplace. Plenty of rooms.

And flies. And fly corpses. Apparently out this way log houses need to be "sprayed" to keep insects away, and this house had never been sprayed, despite being previously lived in. So there are flies in all the windows. And covering the window sills. My uncle has been kind enough to vacuum the bodies up a few times, but in a couple of days their littering the place again. The bathtub hadn't been cleaned or used in about a month, and it looked like the fly holocaust. There was thousands of dead flies just covering this one window sills. It was disturbing to say the least.

But apparently that's not a big deal to stop, so I approve of the house. It does have a good deal of gravel leading up to it, so I don't know if I want to stay the night there or not, just to avoid driving up there on my bike.

I did get packages from my mom though! Stuff to keep my warmer in crossing the wilderness mostly, so this is my "thank you" to Mom.

The next day Grandma left early to go to Denver on her way to take a trip with my Aunt Janet and my mom on a cruise up north. I spent that day wandering around Rapid City, mostly visiting the endless antique stores, and a few coffee shops.

Today I went to visit Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns, which was very cool. It made me want to go caving for real, not just a walk in tour. Maybe I'll look up caves in Washington State. The guide, who was the great great grandson of the discover of the cave and also the current owner, told me there were some old lava tubes near Mount Rainier which might be fun.

I also discovered that 2:00 P.M. on Tuesdays is not the easiest time to find a meal.

I found this cafe/super suave and classy restaurant which said it was open at 3:00, which I thought it was. I waited for them to open, and was then informed it was actually 2:00 and my phone clock was quite wrong.

But they fed me anyway! It was cool.

The cafe I'm writing in is closing now, so I need to stop writing now.