Day Three of the Cross Country Trip

Then on day 3, I woke up at 4 a.m. when it was barely light out, but incredibly beautiful to see the sun rising over the Badlands. Amazed but tired, I went back to bed. Then we all woke up and ran around the hills of rock, and Mark and I went back to the car to get the Nikon and shoes. We climbed around the Badlands for a while, the mountains were so soft, almost just piles of smooth rocks, very easy to slip. We got to the top and took some awesome pictures. There were tons of cow feces everywhere. We got to a barbed wire fence, and Mark decided to jump it. I wanted to climb around so I did. I threw my water bottle over the fence first, and after I got around I thought I had lost it. There was a sharp drop-off, and we looked around and I climbed down to try to recover it. Turns out that it didn't even drop down there, and we recovered it. Connor and Danny came and picked us up, and we went off to the real Badlands park. Amazing view point, and some old guy really loved my simple joke about throwing Connor's phone. Then we drove a little bit, and just climbed some more rocks, and Mark messed up his butt something awful. Connor and I saw the hole I loved and then climbed up and took forever getting down. We drove some more and had awesome views throughout the entire park. Then we drove to Wall Drug. What a place. There was advertising for this town for so long before this spot, all throughout South Dakota, but it was actually a nice little stop. It was like an antique Wild West strip mall. I got a Rushmore shirt and some socks, and we refilled water. Then we stopped at the Walmart in Rapid City, reorganized everything and then went to Hippie Hole. We took the much longer hike down there and thought we were at the wrong place for the whole hike. No poison ivy though, so that was nice, even though I was pretty sure I stepped in some. The water was freezing, and we climbed the rope thing to jump off the rock. Pretty cool place, nice waterfall, but not cool when I lost Danny's GoPro. The water was freezing and I stayed in trying to find it. I got a cold from just sitting there in the water and my ear started to hurt after diving to try to find it. I failed. We then went to Rushmore, walked the presidential trail, and then it started to rain extremely hard. We drove down to the town that was beneath of it, and I ran around the town shirtless in the rain for a free dinner from Mark, because I couldn't find my wallet. We ate at Ruby's, and our food was served so quickly, by Heather. She was nice. I ate something. It was very good, but I can't remember what right now. Then we drove the Devils Tower. This was a really fun drive for one reason. This one dude cut Mark off when he was driving, and almost ran us off the road. So when we sped up beside him, I flicked him off. He got very angry and did it back. Don't think he understood the joke, so I made a heart, but he was not happy, so Connor mooned him. Next we brought out the weapons to intimidate him. They made the motion that they wanted us to pull off to fight them, so we agreed, and made them pull off on some random exit, and we kept going. Ah. Fun times. We got to Devil's Tower and it was pretty cool. We brought out the hammocks, and tried to set up on some trees. None of us had set them up before, but luckily we are all smart guys, who can figure out the simple mechanics of a hammock. My hammock was freezing though because I didn't bring a sweatshirt or a sleeping bag. After sleeping for half an hour, I went and got into Connor's, but then it fell to the ground. Unlucky. I got into Mark's but then we were touching the rocks below his hammock, because the tree they were both attached to was falling. The tree did end up falling, so Mark and I moved back into my hammock, and bundled up.