in other news

Besides looking at really big animal statues, we have been pretty busy. We realized that we have pictures that go all the way back to Wyoming, and we have now been in four new states! Here is a little taste of what we have been doing, in as good as I can remember chronological order.

1. So we're in the middle of Wyoming, which is mostly just flat and dry and ho-hum. We need gas so we pull over at a gas station.

"Hey, all these bikes are in the way of the pump!"
"Wait, I think they're on the habitat trip"
"Do you think they're from Yale?"
"Hi Erin!"


So yeah, we ran into the people who are biking across the country from New Haven to San Fransisco, including fellow Trumbull '06 buddy Erin Dress! Wow!

2. From flat Wyoming we went to flatter Nebraska. Nebraska, however, is anything but ho-hum. We hung out with Costa on the ranch and he took us horseback riding!


That was a lot of fun, but I had a very ornery slow horse and a very sore bum the next day.


The rest of the exciting things that we did in Nebraska are all going to be in the video that will happen soon. But not soon enough.

3. From Nebraska, we went straight North into South Dakota, where we had our last bout of internet. We looked at this rock that has some faces carved into it.


And we had a really great campsite in the Black Hills National Forest.


We also did things like go to a water park, go down an alpine slide, play miniature golf, and pan for gold, but those don't photograph nearly as well.

4. Also in South Dakota, we went touristing at Wall Drug, a ridiculous general store pretty close to that mountain with the faces carved into it. We even mined for gems!


5. From there we headed to the Badlands, a crazy national park that looks kind of like mars, full of spiky and colorful rock formations and rainbows. I'm not sure if there are rainbows on Mars, but whatever.




6. We drove faaaar (still in SD, that state is BIG) to get this picture. I think it might have been worth it.


7. In South Dakota we also made our first friends while camping! The first night at the lake we talked to some people from Pennsylvania, and in the Badlands we chatted with a couple from Santa Cruz that noticed we had a California license plate. At the edge of South Dakota where it meets Minnesota and Iowa, we met a bunch of people from Sioux Falls who were taking their new camper out on its maiden voyage.


They were very friendly and invited us over and told us that when we write our book about the trip we should mention Mike, Barb, Beth and Darren and how nice people from South Dakota are. It's true, they were pretty nice and this is sort of like a book, right?

8. Also, we cleaned out the car! It used to look like this:


We don't have an after picture, but trust me, it's better.

9. And now we are in Minneapolis! Because we are getting really good at coincidences, we ran into another Trumbul '06er at the mall today, Chris Lange! Wow!