RoadTrip: The Final Stretch

As I previously stated, we were going to try to drive from Yellowstone to Naperville straight through.  According to our google maps it was 1391 miles.  This was going to be a long day.

We had planned on waking up similar to when we left Yosemite, around 3 a.m.  However, when Megan fell asleep at 10 p.m. I laid there tireless for an hour.  I kept thinking, 'ok, if I fall asleep now I'll get 4 hours of sleep. I can do that and then nap while Megan is driving and be like normal.'

Then it is Midnight. I think, 'ok, 3 hours isn't terrible, I've done that before and I lived."  But I just lay there not able to fall asleep.  Until finally, the clock on my phone changes to 1 a.m. and I say screw it.  I gently rouse Megan and tell her to bring her pillow and go sleep in the car. I am going to pack everything up and we are leaving because I can't sleep and if I'm awake we might as well be driving.

I pack everything up and we hit the road around 1:30.  Driving anywhere at 1:30 there aren't bound to be many people around but in Yellowstone there isn't a soul.  So I start the drive with Megan sleeping and I have my phone playing some music to jam out to, plus I do well driving at night; it's great thinking time.  It is slow going for the first 2 hours or so, no not because traffic, but because there were so many animals out that I didn't want to hit any of them, plus it was some mountain driving and I didn't want to careen off the road.  At one point I counted 14 animals, most likely elk or deer standing in the road during a one mile stretch.  There were also a bunch of eyes lighting up as I drove past but I couldn't make out any of the animals.

Before long I had made it to Cody, a real town, and I was used to driving at faster speeds than 25 or 30 MPH which was the posted speed limit in town.  At 3 or 4 a.m. on a Saturday night/Sunday morning I was an easy target for the cop that pulled me over but he took pity on me because I wasn't a drunk driver and I was wearing my Guinness pajama pants and still had about 1200 miles to drive.  I drove until about 7 a.m. when the sun was starting to become blinding.  I had made it through the Bighorn Mountains and onto Interstate 90 before Megan took over while I napped.  We had decided that even though some things might add a few miles to our incredibly long journey we wanted to stop and check them out.  Our first such detour was to see Mount Rushmore.

Mount Rushmore - 3 Great Presidents and a friend of the sculptor

We made it to the heads, which is what my sister used to call it when we were younger, around the time we were looking for lunch but it was only 9:30 a.m.  We enjoyed stretching our legs and glad we stopped off to see the Presidents but we were back on the road before we knew it.  I still needed more sleep so I gladly let Megan stay behind the wheel but my nap didn't last long because our next stop was only a few miles down the road at Wall Drug.

If anyone has driven through South Dakota, you have heard of Wall Drug Store.  There are billboards for hundreds of miles touting their coffee, ice water, souvenirs, sandwiches, pretty much everything.  We stopped in and found ourselves to be a little 'out of it' by all the commotion.  We ordered some sandwiches and ate while the whole world seemed to be moving and talking around us.  It was quite surreal.  I guess I was pretty tired; Megan might not have felt the same way about Wall Drug.

Likely the last side story of this journey and it is about Wall Drug.  My little sister collects toothpick holders.  She's unique.  Wherever we would go on trips, she would run into the gas station, visitor center, souvenir shop, hotel gift shop, etc. searching for a toothpick holder.  Amazingly, most places carried them. I swear she is the only person to ever buy them but I guess not.  Well one summer we stopped at Wall Drug because we had seen the billboards for the hours before as we drove towards Godforsaken, South Dakota.  She found a frog toothpick holder, don't ask how I remember that it was a frog one, and was very happy with her purchase.  We kept a bunch of stuff in the top carrier to save space in the car, my job was to always catch the top as my dad flipped it over to me.  Well as we were driving down the interstate after our stop at Wall Drug, the top carrier flew open sending our clothes and one bag of souvenirs down Interstate-90.  We stopped the car and my dad dodged semis to pick up the clothes with giant tire marks across the front of shirts however the frog toothpick holder sadly didn't make it. 

We decided not to spend too much time at Wall Drug and instead choose to drive a short detour loop through Badlands National Park.  We blared Bruce Springsteen's Badlands for pretty much the entire 45 minute drive, which made me endlessly happy as I sang, 'poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king and the king ain't satisfied 'til he rules everything.'  Man he's good; he really is the boss.

Badlands

After our third detour in only about 4 hours, we decided we needed to get some miles behind us and started cruising again.  We switched drivers a few times as we made our way across South Dakota and into Southern Minnesota.  Megan was then tired when the sun went down, so I took over and drove through Iowa down to Interstate-80, which would take us home.  We hit Iowa City, where my older sister went to school and knew that we only had 3 hours left, however it was almost 11p.m. now.



I was still a little wired from making sure I didn't fall asleep while driving and it took me a few minutes to fall asleep.  Megan, I'm not sure if she was completely rested or what but didn't fall asleep for awhile, she said was too excited to see our puppy the next morning as we had to pick her up from the kennel.  We rolled in to my parents place at just after 1 a.m. We drove 1,440 miles in 23.5 hours.

What a trip! We spent time in 13 states over 34 days. We covered 8000+ miles and I wouldn't change a single thing about the trip, except that it had to come to an end.