Road Trip Day 2

July 25, 2016

Day 2

We slept in and caught up on some rest in Omaha and then started towards our next destination- South Dakota!  South Dakota was exciting with yet another new landscape to experience. We made the mistake of skipping lunch and snacking on the way instead of stopping for an actual meal and ended up feeling sick afterwards.  This is probably because our road trip snacks weren’t very healthy or the fact that we stopped at this random Al’s Oasis to pick up some different snacks.  (And lets just say it was quite the experience)

We made it to the Badlands where we drove through the National Park.  This was beautiful!  For all of you Bachelor Nation fans the only time I’ve experienced this before now was on Chris Soule’s season of the Bachelor where he was out in the middle of the Badlands with Kelsey & Ashley on the 2-on-1 date. Fortunately though, I didn’t get left behind like Kelsey! 

It was really windy here and had an extremely dry heat that made you want to drive in your air conditioning vs. hike around.  Not that we were going to hike around since we did have a limited amount of time in each area, but just in case Grant got any funny ideas!  A glimpse of what we got to experience…

Grant, being such a nice guy, offered to take a pic of the couple who was struggling to get a selfie on the cliff.

 

 

So from there we made it Mount Rushmore National Monument in a couple hours.  The fact that it is a National Monument and not a National Park made it seem more like you were in DC at a monument vs out in the middle of nowhere looking at a mountain with faces on it.  Just thought I’d throw that out since I didn’t put that small tidbit of info together before getting there:) Mt Rushmore was another incredible site and I am grateful that we were able to visit this place!

Near the monument is a small town called Keystone, South Dakota which is comparable to Gatlinburg, Tennessee or Jackson Hole, Wyoming in terms of attractions and looks. It had one main street which had lots of touristy food, ice cream and souvenir shops.

We ate at a fun place called Cruizzers Pizza.  It was definitely an experience and you will see from the pics that it was throwback themed, but the food was tasty!

 

Heading down the street we stumbled upon this gem lol

We couldn’t call it a night without getting some ice cream! So we did just that and then headed to the vehicle.

Let’s just say this next stretch was pretty much the longest most uncomfortable part of the trip (this far).  I mean we have officially been in the vehicle for well over a day and so that pretty much explains that!

Our original plan was to make it to Vail, Colorado and spend some time there the next day, but that was another 8 hours away.  Because the sun was setting as we were leaving Keystone, Grant told me there was no way he was making it to Vail (And I certainly wasn’t going to drive).  So we decided to see what options we had for spending the night along our route to Colorado.  Our only reliable option to find a decent place to stay was Cheyenne, Wyoming which was about 5 hours away (not great planning).  I luckily fell asleep after an hour and we then arrived around 3:30am. Grant, driving the entire way, still managed to stay awake working at the hotel for another couple hours…5:30am.  My eyes hurt just thinking about it!! #worktrip

Goodbye day 2!