When You Happen to Meet

The amount of time that it takes you to leave every morning is inversely proportional to the amount of days that you have been on the road. I suppose this makes sense because fatigue builds up. Sleeping on a different bed every night to then spend the entire day in a car with your legs bent (because when you are as long as I am in a car full of things, there is no way you can stretch your legs) is a lot more tiring that it sounds. Anyways, we thought we woke up early to lave Cheyenne, Wyoming early. We had breakfast and left.

The idea was to make it to Mount Rushmore during the day at a decent hour, but we managed not to. It was actually farther away than we thought and driving with 50+ mph winds pushing the car the entire way slows things down. Actually Wyoming, or at least the part of it that we saw, is absolutely boring. Yet I was fascinated by the landscape and by the fact that along the high plateaus you find a lot of ranches surrounded by nothingness. We drove through towns the population of which varied from one thousand to five thousand inhabitants. However we wondered more than once where this five thousand inhabitants were, since it is physically impossible for all of them to live in the only barn that was seen from the road.There was another very interesting thing in the roads of Wyoming: a sign that read "roadside table" followed by an actually roadside table. The only one we saw on the entire trip. Once we got to South Dakota the scenery started to change a little. All of a sudden we were surrounded by trees and we were in Black Hills National Forest. It was around 3 pm and we were starving, the problem was that if we stopped to eat we were not going to be able to see Mount Rushmore in the daylight. So we stopped at a fast-food restaurant and kept on (anyways we didn't have much option in the sole town before the monument.) We got there at approximately quarter to four. It was completely empty, so empty that we were wondering if it was open when we saw a sign that read "yes, we are open." I hadn't really seen many pictures of this monument and I was astonished. It was absolutely worth it to get a little bit out of the way to see it. It was really cold, so we took some pictures and a went into the museum. It is one of the most interesting things I've ever seen. We left and continued our way to Mitchell, South Dakota.

Admitting the fact that we were not going to be able to leave early, we took our time in the morning, just making sure to leave the hotel by check-out time. We spent the whole Tuesday on the road. We crossed three states without any interesting events. Except for two. We got to see the full moon setting in the horizon, with all its greatness and light.  It had a beautiful orange color, and it was really big. While it was setting, there were some parts of the road that seemed to lead to it. It is one of the most beautiful things I got to see. Once again, the moon was our true companion in the trip. And the other event is that we got to have dinner with a dear friend in Madison, Wisconsin. After having spent so much time on the road, it fills your heart with happiness to be able to meet with people you care about, have a good time and good food. It never stops amazing me, when you happen to meet.