Judy and Richard... this is for you!

Did you know that North Dakota houses the world's largest metal sculpture?  

It's 10 stories high and can be seen from the highway quite clearly.

BUT... coming up the road to it you are surrounded by...

It's truly impressive

It, and lots of  its other sculpture friends are on "The Enchanted Highway"

I like the Dakotas!

I have come to realize through this trip that I think I will be happy anywhere God puts me as long as I'm within His will.  That sounds cheesy and obvious, but let me extrapolate a wee bit.  

You see, I really like cities.  Well, I really like Minneapolis... I don't have much experience with cities outside  of that one. I like the cultures; it's a melting pot of so many different people, backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs that it's easier to get a reality check on important things such as "what is poverty?", "what is diversity?", and "what is good food?". (The latter is arguably significantly less important but still a benefit of a city.)

However, while I like cities a lot, I also like camping, living outdoors, and seeing the stars (cities don't have stars). 

Not to mention...

Sunsets over the lakes...

Random wild flowers...

 and cactus... 

and farm implements...

Pastures and grasslands so you don't see buildings for the first 150mi of your day...

Badlands and the acts of erosion... (and I thought I understood erosion living on a bank over the Puget Sound!)

Bring my heart back to the country. 

I enjoy the realization that there's no community for 80 miles... at least, I enjoy it as long as I have gas.

Wherever God eventually has me land (if I land), third world or first world, city or rural, Washington or another state, camping or mansion... I think I'll be happy.  Well, maybe not with a mansion.

Oh Minneapolis, how I love you.

I have had the privilege of spending the past 5 days in Minneapolis seeking closure from graduation, catchup online and with support thank yous, shelter from the relentless storms, and hang out time with the greatest Becca Oehrig on earth.  Suzanne headed back to WA already, so I took advantage of my time in one of my favorite cities in the world to take it all in.

Here are some things I love about Minneapolis.
* Bethel, of course.
* Today, I got to hang out with Becca at her work at Urban Ventures (http://www.urbanventures.org/).  This organization does innercity ministry in a huge way.  She teaches art at a summer/bible school camp thing and the kids are just phenomenal.  So many races and ethnicities coming together.  It's eye opening and makes me smile.  (Plus, I got to hang out with middle school and elementary school kids for a whole day... life doesn't get much better than that!).
* This town is a melting pot of African countries, Latino cultures, Mexican cultures, and so much more. It's fascinating.
* Because of the fascinating array of cultures, there is a fascinating array of food.  Take this drink, for instance. It is a Red Bean, Grass Jelly freeze served at a Malaysian restaurant.  Who wouldn't want that?

(talk about strange texture!)
* Becca Oehrig... the model of the interesting drink is also a great reason to love Minneapolis.
* Leah and other great friends and good food!
* Then, there's the biking.  The fact that I got to go on a 29mi bike ride with a professor and we rode on the road for maybe 2 miles... the rest was paved bike trails.  AND it was a loop!
* Tea and coffee shops... EVERYWHERE... and all of them are independent!
* Crazy things that give Minnesotans pride... like Lego Land in the Mall of America

*Bike traffic... like Portland :)

* An intriguing gay pride festival that we stumbled upon.  Arguably also like Portland.
*AND...at the festival, there was very little adherence to the police rules

"NO PARKING: By order of the Police"... on every parking meter along a street littered with parked cars.

Now, I'm setting out on my own... taking a scenic route back to WA.  I'm sure adventures will abound.

It's Dave!

Once there was a  guy named Dave.  He began a cross-US road trip on June 2nd.  He went to Washington and then across the NW.  He, like us, was camping.  He, like us, likes to kayak.  He, unlike us, was traveling in a Honda Element (a car that I am currently coveting in a loving-Jesus way) with a kayak on top.  He immediately was considered cool.

Also like us, Dave was on our caving trip in the Wind Caves.  We immediately bonded and talked movie references, shared adventures, and had a jolly good time a couple hundred feet underground.  When we got out, we still didn't know his name, so we introduced, said goodbye, made a joke about seeing one another in the Badlands, and went on our Merry Way.

Well, fast forward to Western Minnesota.  We are driving down the highway, Suzanne is saying something of some importance, and I yell, "It's Dave!".  We both look ahead, and there's his pastel Element cruising down the slow lane with his highly coveted kayak.  We burst into laughing, drive up next to him, and Suzanne begins an episode of persistent waving.

He finally catches on to who we are, we pull over, and he drives up next to us.  First question out of both his and Suz's mouth: "How were the Badlands?".   He had a rough night too. 

Well, to make a fun story brief, we continued along chatting on the highway until angry people came up behind us and wanted us to cease our lane blockage.  He was headed to Chicago...  we'll probably not see him again...  most likely.

We're not in Kansas anymore...

Fortunately, we never had to say that... since we purposely have avoided touching Nebraska and Kansas... those states look boring (and Becca's stories confirm my suspicions)

However, we're getting a glimpse of Toto and Dorothy's life.  Remember how I promised you a story from the Badlands?  The end of the story is that we didn't sleep there.

Now, here's the beginning.  I really wanted to go to the Badlands National Park.  I had heard they were gorgeous (and they were) and I really wanted to see them.
We drove into the park, set up camp, and saw that it was probably going to rain so we made a sweet rain shelter.  Then, we had dinner and started playing some Uno (the recipe for a great night... and spanish lessons!).  Suddenly, in the middle of Uno, I looked up from getting creamed (yes, Andrea, it is possible to beat me at 2 person Uno) and saw this MASSIVE BLACK CLOUD heading straight for us.  This cloud contained the entire horizon, ground to sky, and was coming at us.. FAST.  We quickly threw everything we had in the tent, tore off our super sweet rain shelter, and jumped in the tent to hide.

Our tent, evidently, is weak.

Hiding there did no good... the sides started caving on us from the wind and was not much of an emotional support with all the lightening, hail, and rain.  Finally, Suzanne, the one with survival instincts said, "Katharine, this really isn't safe." 
She was right.  We quickly popped the tent poles out so it lay flat, threw the cooler on top, and plopped our soaking wet bodies in the car.

And we sat.
And we sat.
And the car shook with the thunder, swayed with the wind, pounded with the hail, and was totally visible with the lightening flashes. 

We sat in the car, thankful for the dryness and shelter, a bit wary of the conditions outside, and regretting not taking a picture of the cloud.

Once the lightening was a bit further away, we decided to launch a rescue mission.  Realizing that sleeping in the car would be quite uncomfortable (have I mentioned that we have a Mazda Protege?) , something had to happen. So,we jumped in the tent where EVERYTHING we owned was wet.  Our books dripped water, there were puddles on the tent floor, our sleeping bags and pillows felt spongy, and our bags with nice, clean clothes from Crazy Woman were now quite moist. 

Coming to the realization that we had no shelter, no warmth, and no other alternatives, we turned on Harry Potter and drove East.

And found a hotel.

I passed Seminary!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Final grades are in!  

That's a relief!

I didn't actually go to graduation, so I don't really know much about masters' hoods, but I'm guessing it's something along this line :).  Looks official!

VICTORY IS OURS!

Throughout our entire trip, we have been keeping track of the license plates we have seen.  Realizing that our trip was coming to a close and that we were in South Dakota, we entered the town of Wall quite despondent.  We were missing Rhode Island, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.

And then...

 WEST VIRGINIA!

NEW HAMPSHIRE!

So.. just Rhode Island left, right?

Wrong!  That was just around the corner.

Let the victory cheers begin!

Our days of cruising through parking lots for plates are over =)

South Dakota Redeems itself

Well, after our frightful first impression of the state, things did improve significantly.  Despite its close proximity to Wyoming, South Dakota definitely has some redeeming qualities.  For one, Rapid City (our oasis from the scary storm) is a town totally geared toward kids.  Every hotel seems to have a waterpark, there are adventure areas everywhere, and everything is just family friendly.  It's quite cool.

The family friendliness doesn't stop when you go south.  Mt Rushmore is awesome and it has cool exhibits that are interactive (somewhat) and quite informative.  Plus, who couldn't be intrigued by four faces carved into a mountain?

After visiting Rushmore, we began on our merry way until we got distracted by a wax museum.  Disappointed by the entrance fee, I joked that we should go check out the price of the alpine slide across the street. We did.  And before we knew it...

It was tight!  (Both in the fun experience way and some of the corners were really tight turns!)

After Rushmore, we went to Crazy Horse.  Crazy Horse is the Native American version of Rushmore (although they probably wouldn't like that description) except they won't accept federal funding and this one Polish (?) family has been working on it for two generations now.  They have a tribal center with big plans for being the educational place regarding all the tribes in America. It's cool to see such big dreams but really sad to see that those dreams are anchored in hate and hurt.

The current status

 The dream

That night, we went to Custer State Park.  Like Yellowstone, it had many, many buffalo.  But unlike Yellowstone, they called the animals buffalo (in Yellowstone, they were referred to as Bison).  We found that name difference funny.  It's really interesting how, after almost a week of constantly seeing these large beasts one can get bored, almost annoyed by them. Is that human nature, Americanism, or just my ADHD in full effect?  One may never know...

South of Custer State Park is Wind Caves National Park.  If you ever go there, you should totally take the candlelight tunnel tour (except if you're my mom... then, you'd freak out about small, dark spaces and it wouldn't be good...).  It was a great tour... our tour guide, Ken, is a self-confessed History major and future RA.  He fits that mold perfectly.  We got to see so much cool box work and other elements of the cave!  Plus, it was all done by candlelight.  At one point, we blew out our candles.  It was then that I understood darkness.  Darkness is the absence of light... and totally darkness is really overwhelming.  I wasn't able to see my own hand until I smacked myself in the face with it.

Our last activity in the family-friendly Rapid City area was attending the Air and Space Museum.  As the child of two aviators traveling with the child of a Rocket Scientist, not attending this museum would be considered a sin.  And, it was quite impressive!  I've been to many air and space museums in my day (not because I'm old... because I'm a Curles) and this was one of my favorites...not overwhelmingly large but quite informative.

Finally, as we drove away from Rapid City, we started seeing a plethora of billboards.  I have learned on this trip that we are suckers for billboards. In Utah, we saw so many colonoscopy billboards that... (ok, those actually didn't do any advertising good except make us laugh and wonder why there was one every 5ish miles).   But, anyways, in South Dakota, there is a delightful place called Al's Oasis that had gas and food.  We HAD to stop there (you never know where society will next lie).  Then, along 90, there are no less than 20 billboards for this place called Wall Drug.  At first, we made fun of them... "wow, these guys must be desperate".  Eventually, I (who was driving) gave in. I turned into the town of Wall, Suzanne looked at me with a "are we really going?" look, and we parked the car and walked down the street.

It was amazing.  There were food shops, gift shops, an arcade (don't worry, we played), free bumperstickers, a 15' T-Rex who tried to eat every 12 minutes, and a nice old man who said that they have 22,000 visitors a day. 

Check out the new shades!  Thanks, Wall Drug! 

The next day, realizing that bulletin boards don't always lie about coolness, we stopped again.  This time for the world's only corn palace.  It was impressive... and quite corny.  (sorry for the pun...)

"The good news is... we're out of Wyoming. The bad news is... we're in South Dakota"

 

Pictures taken from moving car windows don't ever turn out too hot, but this is the welcome to South Dakota sign.  Please notice that the terrain looks quite similar to Wyoming's.  Yet it was still a reason to celebrate... We had officially moved from the Bison State to the Rushmore State. Just that fact alone had to mean that our drive was going to get more interesting.

Please notice again the skies in that picture.  Let me tell you that it was about 4pm when that photo was taken... do those look like happy June afternoon skies?  I think not.

And they only got worse.  This was around 5. On the longest day of the year.  As the strange, creepy red sky came into view, I kept thinking of a book, "Red Sky in Mourning" that I read in high school (officially the most recent time I've had a chance to read books that aren't about psychology, education, sports, or religion).  I remember the author talking about how red skies are indicative of bad, bad storms. 

Looking behind us, it was rather apparent that we were not heading toward the good weather.  

So, with our imaginations freaking out, our eyes seeing possible funnel clouds, and our NW weather senses being pushed beyond their limits, we turned off Harry Potter (OH NO!) and tuned into the charming South Dakota radio world, waiting for weather warnings.  None appeared, but we didn't care.  It was a night for a hotel.

Gillette, WY

Gillette, Wyoming.  What a great place. For one, it is a town... with people... in other words, it resembles civilization.  I'm finding that that is rare in Wyoming (which is one of the reasons that I think I could live there... I miss Touchet and the other small towns around Walla-squared!).  AND... it had a great internet cafe where I got to eat a Quesadilla. Life doesn't get much better than that.

Another good reason Gillette is a great place is that they have a campground with laundry and showers.  After almost a whole week without cleanliness, that was very refreshing.  The final perk is that the campground is called the Crazy Woman.  Who doesn't want to stay here?

I'm always impressed by the people in campgrounds.  This one was partially residential... housing laborers for a few months at a time (and a random guy working on his phD).  As we all did laundry, we got to talk about our different states of origin.  We ended up talking especially long to a guy who works on one of these (photo compliments of a bbc news article from 2008). Actually, it sounds as though he works on many of them... he claims to drive about 300 miles a day for work.  I thought I drove a lot when I lived in WW!  We talked about the Gulf spill and how he thinks that if the government over reacts, America is going to be in a world of hurt and he's going to hide at his ranch with his own natural gas.  It was interesting to hear that from "the front lines".  He also told stories of his former life as a crab fisherman in Alaska... I miss the old fisherman stories from Gig Harbor.  It was fun to hear!

In the morning, we went to Gillette's "church corner" and went to the church that began closest to our arrival.  This church happened to be a very small PC(USA) church.  There were maybe 75 people there... probably closer to 50... and it was very much a family.  The church had given the pastor the day off, so one of the members ran the service and another did the sermon.  He preached on Psalm 23.  "Oh boy," I thought, "another 23rd Psalm sermon".  But it was actually really good.  As I was reading along in my TNIV Bible, I realized that this Psalm is a lot more than just a good comfort Psalm for funerals.  It actually pertains to my life... now and in Guatemala.
    ¹ The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

    ² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
       he leads me beside quiet waters,

    ³ he refreshes my soul.
       He guides me along the right paths
       for his name's sake.

    ⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
       I will fear no evil,
       for you are with me;
       your rod and your staff,
       they comfort me.

    ⁵ You prepare a table before me
       in the presence of my enemies.
       You anoint my head with oil;
       my cup overflows.

    ⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
       and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

 That was cool.  I always enjoy seeing new spins on familiar things. Our darkest valley doesn't have to be death.  In fact, I don't think it is.  It's loneliness, feelings of abandonment, fears of being unable to communicate, emotions we don't understand or are scared to articulate, and a host of other things.  Despite what that valley is, God's there...  Me gusta.

Finally, as we were leaving, we had a very friendly woman next to us ask if we were going to Devil's Tower.  This landmark was something that the people at the campground had recommended as well and it seemed to be Gillette's pride and joy, despite the fact that it's an hour+ away from the town.  With the resounding recommendation, we really had to go.  It was pretty cool.  I really want to climb it!

Plus, it had a great billboard!

"For heaven's sake!  Please stop and eat before we both starve!"  

Suzanne ate the fence.

The trials of camping

Whenever you go on an extended camping trip, interesting stories are sure to abound.  This trip is no exception.

We begin our tales with Red Rock State Park in Northern California.  We got to this park late, after a sunset cruise through a ghost town that proved to have no camping available.  When we got there, the first thing we noticed was the wind.  It definitely existed!  It was so strong that it necessitated tying our tent to our car and using our food bins, etc to keep the ends on the ground.

Our second tale takes place in Western Colorado. That night, it rained so hard that we drove extra far to my aunt's house to get warm and dry.

Then, we stayed at Utah Lake State Park.  Here, the extraordinarily kind campsite host greeted us and chatted a bunch!  We got to learn about hosting, RV living, and her husband let us borrow his wrench.

Then, we went to Yellowstone.  That's when the stories get fun. First of all, there was a really nice lady named Barbara who checked us in.  She was from Florida and very nice.  She did say it was a bit cold for her though.
Barbara was right, it was a pretty cold night and we headed to bed.  When we woke up, there was snow on the ground.  The story is even better when you hear that we held a tarp on top of our tent (for better waterproofing) with ropes on either side to trees, and there was bear poo lining the tent on one half moon side.  Our theory is that the bear was checking out the place, got clothes-lined, walked to the other side, got clothes-lined again, and continued down the path to the bathroom, angry and pooing all the way.

Then, we come to Gillette, the land of happy oil drillers and laborers who have many a story to tell while doing laundry.  That night was a thunderstorm that sounded like warfare with lightening brighter than I've ever seen and wind that blew the sides of our tent. When we woke up, one of the guys down the way asked, "how did you girls do with the storm last night?"  Evidently, we come off as weak.

After Gillette, we headed to South Dakota.  South Dakota has a lot to offer and I was excited to camp.  However, in Gillette, we had heard about tornado warnings so decided to pay a bit of attention to the sky.  It was dark red... and crazy cloud formations that looked kinda like funnels were forming on the horizon.  We decided to get a hotel.  The next night, we camped in Cuter State Park and had a night reminiscent of Gillette.  Finally, the next night was our last straw.  We were in the beautiful Badlands (more stories to come!) and suddenly, while playing cards, this giant black cloud came screaming toward us... it was HUGE!   We jumped in the tent as it started caving in on us.  Judging the situation as unsafe, Suzanne suggested we go to the car.  She was smart.  We took the poles out and jumped in.  It was soooo wet!  After the lightening ceased being right on top of us, we grabbed all our items (thoroughly soaked), the remnants of our tent, and started driving east until we found a city for a hotel.  Our stuff wasn't dry until we got to Minneapolis and used a dryer.

The tent's a pretty geometric shape now too... the poles aren't straight and the seams are all torn a part.  It will be a fun trip home!

As I'm in Minneapolis, we have continued to have severe thunderstorms, tornado warnings, and flash flooding.  Thank goodness for friends!

This is good preparation for Guatemala storms!

Yellowstone

Often, the hardest decision you'll be forced to make at Yellowstone is "should I people watch or take in all the sights?"  Numerous times during this trip, I have been impressed by the large, large spectrum of people National Parks attract.  This awe was even more exaggerated at Yellowstone.  There were so many languages, styles, ethnicities, nationalities, a large selection of dogs, a plethora of accents (and Suzanne added to the selection by speaking in accents from time to time), and some amazing, one of a kind, choices of outfits.

We finally decided that the people were not nearly as interesting as the Yellowstone's natural features.  They were quite amazing!  Here are some geyser pictures...

 This seems like a warm place for a bear...

Shout out to Timm and Teri Johnson and their Wing and a Prayer BBQ!

-----------------------------------
A mud volcano picture...

An engineer's worse nightmare...

And some from the canyons and waterfalls.

To get to this viewpoint, we had to take a 300+ stairwell down.  It was a pretty taxing hike back up the hill.  On our way back from a canyon trail, there was a 8th/9th gradeish boy texting at the top of the trailhead. S and I laughed about the absurdity of him texting in Yellowstone. Then, around the corner, we saw his mom who said she was waiting for her family who was still down the hill...
K - "I think your son is at the top of the trail texting". 
Mom - "Really?  ... He's busted" (with a kind smile)
K/S - begin backpedaling... "he may just be checking the time", "we could be wrong", "I'm not sure..."
Mom - "No... it's texting."  Yells, "__(name)__, come here... you've been busted!"
K/S - run up the hill... far, far away.

AND... We went to the Continental Divide!