Ten people, 2350 miles in one vehicle, what more can I say…awesome, exciting, crowded, fun, food, beautiful sights, not so beautiful sights, sometimes a little smelly, but overall one crazy adventure. 

We left after worship on Sunday, drove through most of the state of Minnesota and spent the night in Worthington at an awesome church.  We girls got to sleep on couches, our room had a stereo, TV/DVD player, pool table & foosball table.  The boys got the room with a view, a fake fireplace!  Left oh so early the next morning about 7a.m.  On our way to Manderson we saw our first Badlands views, what an incredible sight. 

Our home for the next few days was much more than we expected, 4 bedrooms with full baths and a kitchen out in the country.  We set up a picnic table in the kitchen to use.  Stopped at Wounded Knee that day and met our 1st Native Americans.  They were very talkative.

We finally met Pinkey our coordinator for our mission work.  She was one of the kindest people I have ever met.  She brought us supplies from her own home for us to use.  Everyone we met in Manderson, was so kind and generous.  We saw lots of homeless dogs, some with mange; it was really sad and hard to resist the urge to pet them.  While we were eating some sandwiches outside by Pinky’s Store, kids were coming up an asking for food and money.

Due to all the rain Pinkey set up a tour for us at the Red Cloud school in Pine Ridge the next morning.  We also found out that we would be eating lunch every day at the Wounded Knee District School, which was a lot of fun!  We went back to our lodging, had dinner, and worked on our VBS.

Next was lunch with the kids, then set up for VBS our last day.  We had worked hard and the people in this place had made such an impression on us all.  The kids came and we prayed and played with them.  It was hard to say goodbye to all our new friends.  We hoped they had gotten as much out of the experience as we did.  It was time to head out, but not without a brief stop to watch the grand procession of horses and riders into the Pow-Wow grounds.  We were able to listen to the opening prayers.  We all shared a Mega Indian Burger & Mega Indian Taco for dinner.  The main Pow-Wow events started the next day.  

We then headed to Crazy Horse Campground for the next 3 nights.  Friday, we went down to Jewel cave, bought our tickets for the tour at 2:40pm.  On the way we saw our 1st bison or as PT would say “Buff”.  Momma’s and their babies were so cute.  While waiting for our tour time we went up to Crazy Horse monument and had a quick look, ate lunch and headed back to the cave, making it just in the nick of time.  The cave tour was awesome!  Next to Evan’s Plunge hot spring.  Swimming, playing b-ball, swinging on the rings, David and Will made it the farthest.  Slid down the water slides, only 3 injuries of the whole trip happened at Plunge, 2 scrapes and one bruised elbow.  This would also be our only illness, when Katie felt sick.  We then went out to eat at a Chinese buffet, yummy stuff.  We had to leave poor sick Katie in the van.

Saturday we headed out to Custer State park watched PT chase antelope, bison fight over some good grass to eat.  Listen to prairie dogs chatter, Momma turkey try to lead us away from her baby.  More “Buff” and awesome scenery.  Stopped in a park to cook lunch, Amber found the 1st and only rattlesnake when she was climbing on the rocks and almost stepped on it!  Brent poked it and Will took pictures of it.  We drove along the Needles Highway up to Mt Rushmore, hiked to a cool overlook.  Some of the group were too tired and stayed in the van with Katie.  We made it to Mt. Rushmore before dark and before the rain.  Went to dinner and came back for the light show at Rushmore, but so did the rain so there was not much of any light show.

Sunday we packed up to head home.  Drove through the Badlands, what a sight to see!  Tried to find a place to have a picnic and BBQ but no luck, if we found the picnic spot we couldn’t find the charcoal or visa-versa.  Drove all the way to Mitchell SD, where we slept on the floor of a nice church. Before bed we went to Culvers and made a stop at the corn palace but the lights went off just as we arrived, 11pm must be lights out time for the corn palace.

When we returned to the church we decided that everyone just wanted to get home so we voted to get up at 5am to head home as fast as we could.  We drove straight through to Wild Rose, washed the van, unpacked the van and went home to our own beds…