This is part 3 of my 10 part series recounting my July trip.
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Mission, SD

When I arrived on Friday night (July 1st), since there was a cat living in Laura’s apartment (and I’m allergic), I crashed on the hide-a-bed couch on the house some of the other interns were living in. Laura is a friend of mine from Ames and is one of several interns spending the summer out there through a ministry out there helping lead kids clubs.

I must have been tired Friday  night because I completely slept through the noise of one of the interns slipping out to run a 5K at 6:30am. Instead, I slept in until at least 10, maybe even 11. I don’t remember, I just know that there wasn’t anything to do. One of the other interns cooked lunch and then we took to a nearby town to hang out with some of the local kids. We chilled on the playground in a park and I played some 2-on-2 basketball with some young boys. It wasn’t really a very fair game, so we didn’t keep score. I blame my six-year-old teammate; he let those 10-year-olds outplay him. We walked over to watch the kids play in the lake but didn’t join them. Guess I’ll have to bring my swim suit next time.

This dog basically stood in the same place the whole time the kids were swimming. It seemed very content to only get its legs wet.

Perhaps the craziest thing was the number of fireworks they had out there. Coming from Iowa, where anything cooler than a sparkler is basically illegal, plus the fact that I’m a fairly safety conscious person, it was rather unsettling to see the number of fireworks that these little kids were running around with. The whole day there was a constant pop, pop, pop of fireworks being lit off, even in this super tiny town.

Lots of bottle rockets. When he lit one of the ones he stuffed in the tube, it was packed too tightly and exploded on the end of the tube. I think it ruined the others.

Badlands

I took off around 3:30 or 4, heading to Mount Rushmore via the Badlands. The drive was a good change of pace. As I crossed eastern South Dakota the night before, it was dark so I couldn’t see the change from cornfields to pastureland. Saturday afternoon as I headed farther west there were more hills and emptier roads. When I arrived at Badlands, I took some time to stop and hike up a trail to get some photos. The climb up with my big camera bag, Camelback and tripod wasn’t too bad. The climb back down was a different story though, as my shoes have no tread left and the steep trails were covered with small gravel that left me sliding down some parts of the trail.

The photo I took on the trail on my way up.

What really surprised me is that when I got to the top of the rocks, I guess I expected to look down the other side. Instead it was just flat prairie at the top. At Badlands, there were scary clouds on the horizon, so I suited up in my rain gear and continued on towards Rapid City. Thankfully, the highway threaded between the two big cells of the storm, so I only got rained on for a few minutes. Little did I know that this wasn’t the last time I’d see rain.

Storm on the horizon

Looking back on a rainbow after driving through the storm.

This is part 2 of my 10 part series recounting my July trip. Read part 1 now, part 3 soon.

Go West, Young Man

As I got on my motorcycle on Friday, the odometer read 18999.7 miles. It rolled over to an even 19,000 before I left town, making it easy for me to calculate my elapsed mileage as I traveled across the Midwest. I rolled out from Marshalltown right on time on July 1^st, stopping by Ames to picking up a stuffed Cy that @ISU_CoE gave me to take along on my journey and to get lunch at Fighting Burrito with a friend. After that, I kept heading west.

The problem with riding a motorcycle is that you don’t have air conditioning. As I crossed western Iowa on Friday afternoon, the temperature sat at 95 degrees, just two degrees shy of breaking the record set back in 1966. Even when you’re going 60-70 miles an hour, the wind doesn’t feel cool. I’m pretty sensitive to heat and by mid-afternoon, I’d started getting a bad headache despite drinking a lot of water, so I took a few minutes to stop in Denison for ice cream and Advil.

My helmet is a full-face helmet plus I’m riding a motorcycle, so drinking from a water bottle would be a little bit problematic. To solve this, I picked up a 100oz Camelback, a small insulated backpack with a big bag that holds water. Although expensive, this was a wonderful investment. I don’t know how many times I emptied it over the trip, but every few stops for gas I’d top it off with ice. The taste of fresh ice water when I topped it off was always so refreshing.

From Denison, I drove on to Holstein to drive past the house we lived in until I was seven and we moved to Boone. Nobody was home and I didn’t want to go walking through the yard without permission, so I snapped some photos from the driveway. The spruce trees back behind the house were planted by my parents years ago; they’re taller than the house now. The garage is gone, but the bike shed is still there. The chain link fence is gone too.

The house we lived in until I was 7.

From Holstein, I drove north to Oakdale Evangelical Free Church, about 10 minutes north of Cherokee. This was the church we had grown up going to. I knew they’d built a new building, but I discovered they’d torn down the old building, so I wasn’t able to get any photos of that. The parsonage and park were still there, including the shelter, slide and carpetball tables that I remember from when I was little. There was a dog running around, so I didn’t stop to get any photos of the park.

Oakdale Evangelical Free Church

After Oakdale, the trip was pretty straightforward: head to Mission and try to get there before it got too late. If I remember correctly, it was around 6:30pm and the heat of the day was disappearing. As I got closer to the western edge of the state, the roads got hillier and the last few hours before dark were just delightful.

Somewhere around midnight I crossed the Missouri River in the middle of South Dakota where I stopped at a scenic overlook and snapped some photos. There was no artificial light there, so it was quite beautiful. If I hadn’t been set on getting to Mission, I probably would have just pitched at tent at the overlook overnight.

The Big Dipper

A car drives past into the night.

This is the first of a 10 part series. Check back tomorrow for part 2. It will be longer, I promise.

The Motorcycle Trip

Preparation

Some people criticize the use of the word “epic”, saying that its rampant overuse cheapens the meaning of the word. When used as an adjective, one of the definitions that Google lists is “heroic or grand in scale or character.” Criticize my usage if you want, but I stand by the title of my post because my summer vacation was grand in scale. It is not, however, a story “portraying heroic deeds and adventures or covering an extended period of time,” so I shall refrain from using the word epic as a noun. Quite contrary to that definition, my adventure was actually quite short. From beginning to end, my trip was 10 days and split almost exactly in half: my motorcycle tour of the western Midwest and the #NASATweetup at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For the few weeks preceding my departure, I was working hard to plan carefully every detail of the trip. I was going to be on my motorcycle for five days, July 1st-July 5th. I’d leave at noon on the 1st and get back late on the 5th. On the 6th, I’d go to work half a day and then catch my flight that night to Daytona Beach where I’d hang out until my flight back home on the 10th.
For Friday, I’d planned to leave Marshalltown, drive through Ames to pick up a stuffed Cy from @ISU_CoE, drive past the house I lived in until I was 7, past our old church, and then head to a campground in southern Minnesota. The night before though, Minnesota thought it would be funny to not finalize their state’s budget, so the morning of July 1st all non-critical state functions shut down – including their state parks. This little snag in my plan left me with nowhere to stay on Friday night, so I talked to Laura, a friend I was going to visit for a few hours on Saturday as I passed through southern South Dakota, and we decided I should just come straight to Mission and crash overnight there. I had my route!

I went on a solo motorcycle roadtrip to South Dakota and Colorado and took Cy along. Then I flew down to Florida for the #NASATweetup for the final space shuttle launch. Thankfully, Cy fit in my camera bag and didn’t need his own ticket. Enjoy the photos! I’m sure Cy will be going on more adventures very soon.

Cy in the Badlands

Cy with a giant tortoise at Reptile Gardens in Rapid City, SD.

Cy hanging out in my camera bag with some of the Rocky Mountains behind him.

Cy the Astronaut

Cy giving a NASA press conference.

Cy with NASA Astronaut Doug Wheelock

Cy keeping watch on my laptop.

Me and Cy with ISU Alum Jeremy Bingham (@iowaradioguy)

Me, Cy, and Timmy from Thinkgeek

Cy, Elmo, and Me

With over 50 submissions, there were several great haikus, but one stood out in my mind.

Written by Redditor DanielDoh:

The steppes are quiet
What lies beyond the bushes?
Zealots pace, restless

Congratulations!

Some of my other favorites, in no particular order: (more…)