Ultimate American Road Trip part 1

I'll be blogging about this adventure in many segments because there is way too much to tell in just one post. I can't leave out the details or you wouldn't get the feel for how amazing this trip really was for me!

DAY 1

The brave travelers met bright and early Sunday morning to pack up the car. The 5 of us (Me, Cali, Molly, Kelley, and Bryce) somehow managed to fit all of our gear into the Subaru Outback. We memorized the puzzle so we could fit it all in again. Then we hurried over to attend sacrament meeting at a family ward. It was fast Sunday and a little girl got up and started telling the story about Joseph Smith's leg surgery. When she got to the part where Joseph Smith says no to drinking alcohol for the pain, she stopped and said "well, that was a good idea". I totally agree! Her parents are doing a great job teaching her about the gospel! We wanted to get on the road so we only stayed for sacrament meeting.

After throwing together some sandwiches, we piled into the Subaru and began the long journey across America. We drove through Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

We had a camp site reserved in the Black Hills of SD. We followed the winding road through the mountains, but the GPS kept losing the signal so we never found our camp site. Instead, we found this...

(You know that State Farm commercial, where the buffalo ram into the guy's car? That's what I imagined happening as we quickly stopped to take a picture. You never know when these animals will go crazy!)

and this...

(a beautiful view)

Well, we found another camp site, set up our tents in the dark, and fell asleep to the peaceful sounds of the forest.

DAY 2

We packed up and made our way to Mount Rushmore!Yep, it's awesome! As we walked along the path around the monument, Cali, the history teacher, gave us a personal tour. She probably made up about half of everything she told us.

Then we drove to Minnesota.

Did you know they have this guy there?

To celebrate reaching 1000 miles, Bryce rolled the windows down without any warning to us three girls in the back, who were peacefully watching a movie. We were going so fast, Cali's pillow almost got sucked out the window! Luckily, Molly had cat-like reflexes and snatched it right out of the air.

We camped again that night.We were getting into the groove of driving ten hours a day!