Making use of our $90 national park pass

The Badlands:

We backtracked a couple hours from Deadwood to get to the Badlands. We had picked up a Badlands map from the motel, but managed to lose it in the car half an hour into our drive to the park. This has become a reoccurring theme -- the car has become a black hole for anything important to our trip. So we pulled over at a rest stop to get a new map and figure out which entrance we wanted to go into. Of course the lady at the rest stop took 10 minutes to tell us about Wall, SD (some touristy attraction with all sorts of relics and antiques you can spend your money on). We deliberately skipped the town and headed straight for the Badlands. Surprisingly enough, the park ranger at the entrance was quite attractive. When you start spending more and more time camping and backpacking you sadly start to realize how lucky you are to be young and good-looking.

So we pull in and within 5 minutes we see this:



More to come....

Delirious drive to Mt. Rushmore & Deadwood

So if you're still interesting in reading after Jeff's lengthy rambles then I'll continue to write.

From Chicago we spontaneously decided that we would drive through the night and try and catch the sunrise at Mt. Rushmore (South Dakota). Switching off every few hours we managed to make it at 5:00am only to find the entrance closed. Not to be stopped we decided to keep driving and find a way up. We parked the car and started scaling upwards to get a better view (avoiding the bears that we were convinced existed from the lack of sleep). We got up to to the top of our destination just below and to the left of George Washington's head. The sun had just peaked over the the Black Hills and we got a spectacular view as the sun moved across the valley. Of course scaling back down I wiped out, but no serious injuries just yet.

Still in an insomniac-induced delirium we took the scenic route through the Black Hills to a little town called Deadwood. Having picked apart the AAA guides for casinos we found that Deadwood had legalized poker and gambling again in the early 90's. This was too good of an opportunity to pass up as usual. This town looked straight out of a western flick -- with saloons lining the main street.



Not sure if the picture does it justice, but it felt like a movie scene. We had lunch in a saloon and wandered around looking to play poker. Unfortunately, the low stakes game we found didn't really interest us too much. We played a bit of poker and enjoyed a much needed hot shower. Paula, the lady running our motel, was probably the nicest and most accommodating person we had ever met. So far the further we go west, the nicer the people get. It almost seems that living closer to the east coast makes us all look like complete, time-driven assholes. That being said, the people love giving you more information than needed and raving about their small towns, which are nothing more than a speck on the map.

From Pittsburgh to greener pastures

Thursday morning rolls around and I finally have Bowgan ready to actually take off on this adventure. As I am putting the of my stuff in the car, genius boy instantly blows the radio/cirgar lighter fuse to the Honda, Im a decent talker on a car ride, but no music = problem on an upcoming 20 hours in 5 days. Anyways, we made due with what we had and ultimately got the car taken care of in Chicago.
The Pittsburgh move out went relatively smooth and I feel no remorse about leaving that city behind. Its not that I didnt enjoy college, but there is more to life than getting hammered 5 days a week. Im down to just 2 now...

After a beautiful seafood dinner that Ms Anna Hunka treated us to, we took off for the Windy City. Our destination was a cheap hostel in Lincoln Park outside of Chicago. I have always heard Europeans raving about up their hostels, but wasnt sure what to expect. Much to my surprise, the hostel was a really nice place to find stuff to do in the city, and people to do it with, We met an Austrian guy named Thomas who came out with us for a couple nights. While he didnt seem to enjoy much beer that was Austrian tasting??? he could hold his own, and we got absolutely trashed. This is reflected in the video Bowgan will post of the next afternoon after a really rough lunch where I managed to order a sandwich and immediately ask it to be boxed.

So Chicago's beach aspect with Lake Michigan was amazing, and the city is very clean and bars were fun. We made sure to do some touristy stuff as well, like the giant buildings and the pier fireworks. Im a little upset I didnt get to check out the live blues music the city has to offer, but I will get over it. Overall I am giving it a 13.5/16. Two points deducted for it being expensive, and the other .5 lost for it being uncomfortably cold during winter.

We decided to remain in Chicago for the World Cup final on Sunday which was an awesome game for any soccer fan. Unfortunately, they hardly exist in the country (at least not American born). Since we had some time to kill prior, we wandered around the set of Transformers 3 that was being filmed downtown at the time. Pretty cool stuff. Pictures will follow.

I should probably mention that many of the pictures (at least the nice ones) are generally accompanied with a turtle figure. This little guy has now been officially named "C.Ash" and is a very important member of the trip. I thought the idea of only posting pictures of him traveling the country and posting on the blog from the Cash's (turtles) perspective was hilarious.....but it is also a pain in the ass to focus on when you got Bison to slay. So the lack of maturity wins out again. He is pretty funny in some pics though.

It had been about six days since we had played Texas Hold;em, so we decided to just bee line over to Mt. Rushmore and see if we could catch the sunrise there because 30 miles away is the historic, gambling town of Deadwood South Dakota. hahaha quite an interesting town...

Leaving Tomorrow

And we're off tomorrow. Weeks of discussions have finally materialized into a semi-structured road trip to the Pacific Coast.

Who am I kidding? All we have is a car, some camping equipment, and a little bit of free will. Our procrastination has dominated the planning aspect of the trip. We're itching to get out of suburban America and head west. We circled all the places we want to go on our big fold-up map of the USA. We'll be in Pittsburgh tomorrow and then head out Friday morning for our first real stop, Chicago, IL.

We'll be staying the weekend at a hostel in Lincoln Park. According to the hostel's website, Lincoln Park is "the best neighborhood if you are looking to party and see what Chicago is really about. You can walk to hundreds of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and music venues. You can also walk to Chicago’s best beach, the lakefront path, or the free lakefront zoo."

For all those degenerate alcoholics who may have stumbled on this post you're probably still stuck on "looking to party" and "hundreds of bars". With the hype and anticipation of the road trip I'm sure we'll be leaving sunday afternoon with quite a few ridiculous stories.

On a final note, I urge all of you to watch the World Cup Finals on Sunday afternoon between Spain and the Netherlands.