Word of the day… wow!

Since I have the memory of a goldfish I have to start by saying thanks for the comments and keep them coming! It’s so cool to know we have friends and family enjoying this trip with us! Next order of business, wishing Jeanine and Lois both a happy happy birthday! Okay now where were we…
Okay yes so we checked in last night and then went to grab a bite to eat. In keeping with tradition, we ordered way too much food and then were stuffed by the time we finished our appetizer. But we pushed through and had a little more… then our waitress forgot about us which was not good because we were trying to get to Mt Rushmore for the evening light show. So we then had to (stop reading Dad) race up a mountain to try and get there on time. Nah just kidding, the thing is, they make it pretty impossible to race up there. They set the speed limit at 45 but it’s so scary and windy and uphill and you just think you’re going to die the whole time so I maybe did 46… while saying ohmygodohmygodohmygod the entire 15 minutes up. Very scary. So we got there and they have an amphitheater that was packed with people, they give backgrounds of all the presidents then cue the patriotic music and slowly light it up. It was pretty cool, only problem is, our cameras are used to NY where there’s always lights all over the place so we didn’t get the best pictures so we decided we’d go back in the morning.

This morning I set the alarm to get up at 5:45 because I thought they’d probably have some pretty sunrises here and since our forgetful waitress made us miss sunset, I wanted to check it out. Well I actually got up at 5:15 which is kind of annoying because I’m on vacation –hello!?! But in my head it’s 7:15 or that’s how I justified it… sure. Anyway it was so pretty out there and remember how quiet I told you it was? Well I went down the driveway (that’s longer than my entire street) to take some pictures and all of a sudden I heard something so I went investigating (which I’m quite good at thanks to Law & Order) and found what the noise was… it was a deer walking through the grass about 150 feet away from me! I know it was about 150 feet away because it was about the size of my entire block… where we have 3 houses on one tiny street… things are a little different out here! But isn’t that crazy?!? So quiet you hear a deer walking! Insane… oh and it wasn’t like a fat deer that other deer make fun of because she’s so loud… just a normal little deer! So we packed up, had a delicious breakfast –prepared by Mark who used to be a chef… you know, before he decided to build incredible houses. Oh and neither of which he was trained for, he just picked it up! I mean I’m not saying that I’ve never ever just taught myself something because I have, I taught myself how to tie my shoes and then taught my sister, which I always thought was pretty impressive… apparently I’ve met my match! Wow…

After we stuffed our car and stuffed our faces with food, we headed out. Our first stop was Crazy Horse. This is a GIANT monument being sculpted into what we learned is Thunder Mountain (like the Thunder cats-FUN!). It is so huge, the 4 presidents from Mt Rushmore can fit into Crazy Horse’s head! Work started on this over 60 years ago and they are projecting it to take another 40-60 years! The original sculptor has passed away but his wife and some of his 10 kids (along with others obviously) are continuing the work on it until it’s complete. One of the reason’s it’s taking so long is because they’re not funded by the government or anything. They are funded completely by people’s interest (going to visit & buying souvenirs & donations). To give you an idea, we watched a video of them working on it and there was a man working on the detail of Crazy Horse’s eyeball and the eyeball was bigger than him. And no it was not a midget. It’s pretty insane that we saw something that started way before we were born and may not even be completed in our lifetime. This is a picture of the replica of what it will look like and the mountain with his face finished in the background.  Wow…

Then it was off to Mt Rushmore again. Even though we went last night we figured we should go back and get some pictures. Plus today’s weather is really great so how could we not make a quick stop? Even though it’s small compared to Crazy Horse, it’s still a pretty incredible thing to see and it’s one of those things that if you can, you should definitely add it to your list. Plus it gives you bonus Patriot points!

And then we were back on the road. So Wyoming’s a big state, huh? Yea the fun part of today is that we’re not driving on one road for like 200 miles or anything. No, no… we’re driving on little one lane roads for 20 miles here, 40 miles there...then eventually 60 miles here and 80 miles there. We passed a sign for Lost Springs – Population 1 and then passed a giant Jackalope on a mountain – oh yea did I forget to tell you? Apparently the Jackalope is the official mythical creature of WY. Do you know your state’s mythical creature??

Okay so the fun thing about driving west is that you’re basically chasing the sunset so it ends up lasting way longer than it ever really does. Wyoming is so far the most interesting state to drive through. It started out with nothing, literally tumbleweeds blowing across the road, then there were little shady towns here and there, then some hills, then these amazing breathtaking mountains. Luckily we got to the mountains at sunset so it was gorgeous! Then we ran into these awesome log cabins all over the place! Literally we saw shacks & trailers & nothingness for hours and hours and all of a sudden these ridiculous huge log cabins were popping up all over the place! So cool!
Okay so yesterday we did corny and now we will go into the most graphic post yet. So remember those gorgeous mountains I was just talking about (if not, go back 2 sentences)? Okay now remember back when you were a kid and in the daylight, the Teddy Bear in the corner of your room looked like your best friend but when the lights were off, little Teddy transformed into one of the scariest things in the world because it was just this crazy scary shadow? Well the “beautiful” mountains… actually are the bad guy that gave me the most terrifying hour of my life emotionally, mentally and physically. So we’ve been switching on and off driving and I was doing the second half today (after the tumbleweeds). We actually drove through the Rockies (beautiful, right? Uhm wait). So it was about 8:15 when I’m driving up this mountain and all of a sudden there’s a sign that says “Pavement Ends” so I’m thinking pavement ends what the hell does that mean?!? Oh it means that there is no longer a road. So the Mountain beast rips away the road right out from under you and decides the next 17 miles (or eternity as it seemed) will be on dirt… on a gigantic mountain… in pitch black… with barely enough width to fit 2 compact cars across. So the speed limit was 55 (since it’s a construction zone) and I maxed out at 18 after making Brian put the AC on because I’m now sweating and gripping the wheel. Bri offered to drive and in my irrational terrified brain I thought, sure let me just pull over to this cliff and we’ll switch! Eventually when I literally just wanted to stop & give up and just maybe call AAA and see if they would maybe fly a helicopter out to just pick me up I decided okay we’ll switch. So we basically stopped in the middle of the non existent road since no one else was on it and switched. Now one major difference between Brian and I is that I’m an emotional extremist whereas he’s more middle of the road. He sees something cool and goes wow that’s cool… whereas I’m like OHMYGOD DID YOU SEE THAT?!?! So he takes the wheel and starts going like 30 off the bat. I literally was gripping the door handle with one hand and my cell phone with the other, like white knuckles gripping. Then my whole happy go lucky day of “wows” slowly shifted to (pardon me) “holy shits” and then quickly progressed into way worse. The saying is a mouth like a trucker… well in my head it was like a trucker that came home from the bar one night to find his wife ran off with his best friend… and took his dog… yea those kinds of words were now racing around my brain as I started to think of how great of a trip this WAS and how lucky we WERE and how dead we were about to be. Oh so I’m just mentioning the mental/emotional effects of the most terrifying hour of my life, here are the physical signs- well my hands were sore from grabbing onto objects for an hour, I was blinking significantly less, breathing significantly less, feeling nauseous and oh yes, my eyes were full of tears for the entire time. I literally think that the only way I could feel this terrified is if I were in a plane that was going down. At one point a giant truck was coming the opposite direction. The good part of that was that it finally shed a little light on Pitch Black Hell Mountain (I believe that’s the name of it) but the bad part is that the light was just enough for me to look to my right and see what was about a foot off the “road” … which was nothing… yup… nothing- just emptiness! Oh and a giant truck was coming at us, that in itself was a bit scary. Well we finally made it up the mountain – phew! The only thing worse than going up this mountain was the next step which was going down the mountain. Why on earth would they make you go up a mountain to go down a mountain?!? Why not just stay down?? So I guess it’s not really long story short because that was pretty long but eventually the worst hour of my life ended and we got to Cowboy Village Resort where we checked into our cozy little log cabin! We went to a brewery for dinner which was awesome! We didn’t even look at the appetizers because there’s physically no more room for any more food to go in but both our dinners were fantastic! Then we headed over to Million Dollar Cowboy Bar so we could sit in saddles at the bar and have a drink! So cool! And now that it's 2:45 am but really only 12:45 am (I'm completely exhausted either way) I will go lay down and ponder how I feel about mountains… natural beauty or terrifying monster… hmmmm…