Lets go get lost...

End of day 3 and Day 4/5

Went to Sioux falls park two nights ago (Monday night) and saw the park, which was pretty awesome. We biked around the falls and went down to dip our feet in the water. After that we went over to our hotel and planned the next day out more clearly. We made an early night of it and got to bed around 10:30. The next morning we woke up and started the busiest day ever. We headed out from the hotel to badlands national park. Along the way we had to stop at the corn palace just to see what it was all about. There were some pretty cool giant murals made out of corn and some pretty cool wigs we had to try on in the gift shop, for no reason of course.

Badlands national park ended up being a really cool sight to see too. Apparently the Badlands were aptly named such by French explorers that tried to traverse the land, but failed because the rocks are too ridiculous. We did some free climbing there and made it up to the top of a ridge for a pretty cool view. After that we finished the drive through the park and headed up to Wall Drug Store. In the camping section we found two necessities for the rest of our trip: 1. Awesome 75-cent Budweiser hat that will be key in picking up chicks and 2. 8-ounce flask that will provide the liquid courage to hit on said chicks. We sat down for lunch and got a buffalo burger and worlds biggest beer. Buffalo meat was pretty tasty, and like always beer was immensely
tasty too.

After Wall we headed over to Rapid City to see Bear Country USA. I suppose the best way to describe this is that it’s a drive through zoo where the animals are not in cages. Upon entering the place we see a giant wolf standing in the middle of the road, not willing to move for anything. In the place we also saw bobcats, reindeer, elk, foxes, and badgers. Oh and of course, bears. Hundreds of bears. Really incredible animals. At the end of the drive through part, there is a walk through part where you can see bear cubs and wolf pups along with several other smaller animals. The bear cubs were possibly the most playful animals imaginable. Its also pretty impressive to see an animal the size of a large house dog just climb up a tree like its no big deal.

The next stop was mount rushmore. Rushmore is awfully impressive. The size of it and the work that had to go into it make Rushmore really impressive. We snapped some shots and went back to the car to find a camp site for the night. We turned up a gravel road and traveled a little distance before finding a relatively flat land to throw the tent up on. Camping in national forests is free and awesome in case you were wondering. We set up the tent and started a fire up like men. Then we sat down on a rock by the fire and enjoyed the view and some keystones.

The next day we woke up pretty early to some animal exploring our little patch of land. We scared it off though. Hopefully it wasn’t a bear. We decided we wanted to go hiking so we looked on the map and found the hardest trail of course. After turning down a gravel road and driving approximately 12893 miles to find the trail, we gave up and decided to poop in the woods instead. At this point we saw some cool cliffs and decided it would be a good idea to free climb up to them. We ended up blazing a trail way higher than originally planned, but that's what being manly is I suppose.

Next we got back to the car and drove over to Devil’s Tower National Monument. This is basically just a giant cylinder of rock with thousands of large boulders around the main structure. Visitors are allowed to climb up about 100 feet on these boulders at the bottom. Hans and I had to climb up about 400 of course. Breaking rules. We’re total rebels. But seriously, risking life for the incredible view was a pretty good idea Id say. And really, we could only fall so far right?

And that's about all we’ve done in the last forty hours. Good thing we don't need sleep.