Annie Moves, Day 3 and the rest of 4: Road Trip, Moving, Adventures

Sorry this is a bit delayed (and a bit long)...moving and unpacking is much more work than I remember, and even worse when trying to adjust to a new time zone. Blah! Night #2 we slept in the car, yes you read that right, at a Rest Stop in Eastern Wyoming.  It was surprisingly safe and a really nice rest stop. I was baffled, but in a good way. We then got up bright and early and kept driving to Mt. Rushmore.  We were both extremely excited to see it.  

Entering South Dakota, it's pretty boring unless you're going to Mt. Rushmore. Sorry SD, no offense, you just didn't do it for me. Too many corn fields.

 Once we got there we were both in awe.  I mean, we knew it would be really big.  But it is seriously HUGE. It's on the side of a cliff and you can see it clear as bell from the highway. We hiked all around on the "President's Trail" and got to see the plaster model the artist himself created for the men that were doing the actual stonework.  They had to hoist these plaster models up on the side of this cliff, hundreds of feet in the air with ropes.  I am still in extreme WOW of these men that worked on this project. 

The entrance, with pillars of every state and their flags!

Also, there is supposedly a vault full of American secrets etc behind Lincoln's head. Pretty dang cool if you ask me. Once we were done we had to grab some lunch in good old Keystone, SD.  It's an quaint little town with a booming population of 315. This was the last planned stop until we reached South Bend.  

The plaster mold.

Great little old western town. Keystone, SD.

It gets even better...we ended up driving through the night because it was thunder and lighting storming in southern Minnesota night #3. I mean, we have storms in the Northwest, but they are not.like.this. I repeat, not at all like what we saw. There was lightening touching down EVERYWHERE to our left and in front of us while we were driving. It was pouring rain, and muggy as all get out. I've been in muggy conditions too. This was a whole new world. It was so bad that you instantly started sweating like you've been on a 7 mile run within seconds. To add to the awesome muggy-ness, there were what felt like millions of mosquitoes. MILLIONS. I had so many bites in just a 15 minute span it was horrid. Also...we were in the middle of nowhere America so we said forget it, and drove through the night.  B was a Saint, truly. He drove until 5:30am, we pulled over and took a quick cat nap. Then I mustered up my energy, wiped my bleary eyes and drove from Iowa, through Illinois, onto South Bend, IN.  We only stopped one time to fill up and wash the bug guts off the front window.  

On "President's Trail" and was able to get a better picture!

Once we arrived (on Sunday) we find out The Foundry (our building) is closed on Sunday so we couldn't get the keys to our place until Monday. Yay! - NOT. We grumbled all the way to a hotel and checked in.  It was about 5:00pm when we passed out, but all we could say was, thank goodness for a bed!

 Xoxo, 

Annie