The Big Move, Part IV: The fourth day of the trip, The Black Hills

I am so far behind this isn't funny.  I have been getting a lot of complaints that there aren't nearly enough pictures (since everyone knows I took many hundreds, perhaps even a few thousand!)... So this post will be mostly pictures, in an attempt to share with you how it went and get caught up at the same time!!

We woke up early and headed straight to Rushmore (at this point I don't remember what we did for food that day!).  Jay had never been to the Black Hills, so we wanted to get a full day of sightseeing in, and be headed towards our final destination by sunset... A LOT of things crammed in one day, but we did it!  We saw Mount Rushmore, The Crazy Horse Memorial and the Badlands.  I had never been in the Crazy Horse Museum and it was by far the most interesting!  We only drove through the Badlands as it was getting late, but we saw them none the less!  Below are some pictures of our adventures that day!

From Mount Rushmore:

We had quite a time trying to get us both in the picture as well as the monument... so they are silly :)

The next stop was The Crazy Horse Monument:

This was great for being able to envision what it will look like when it is completed.

This pictures shows in the background the progress the have made, and in the forefront is the actual sculpture they are using as a model to sculpt the mountain.

Again, we pretty much failed at pictures of us here, this one is the best, but it doesn't show the monument at all :(

The museum at the monument has an extensive collection of Sioux Indian artifacts as well as many sculptures by Korczak Ziolkowski:

Artsy fartsy- this is one of the bronze statues in the museum lined up with the progress :)

Another view of the bronze that shows the completed project.

My favorite was this sculpture outside, made of Mahogony!  It was HUGE!

This one is Jay in front of it, for those of you that don't know, Jay is a little over 6 foot 5 (for perspective)

We had a friendly gentleman offer to take a picture of us after I took one of him and his wife... however the lack of "live screen shooting" proved too much for him (I NEVER use that feature since it uses so much battery, and couldn't remember how to turn it on), 

so this is the best shot we got:

(Shoutout to my beautiful Mama (she bought me that hat) and Jay's sister Shelley for the shirt!  (I know, I know I look stunning in his huge tee).

The next thing to see on the list were the Badlands...

On our way Jay was SO EXCITED to see Bison free roaming next to a camp site, he started yelling for me to take a picture:

Here are some of the actual Badlands, the formations were beautiful! 

I thought the red stripes in these were awesome!

And my favorite shot of the day:

I think as we were driving through the Badlands we must have listened to Jason Aldean's Fly Over States a half a dozen times, and each time we both screamed the line "Take a ride across the Badlands, feel that freedom on your face, breathe in all that open space"!!

We made it to Chamberlin, SD and stopped for some dinner at a VERY small town bar.  The bartender sat down with us and we visited while watching the Angels game :)  We talked fishing, hunting, locals and beer with her :)  She made us try Shock Top's new Lemon Shandy.  It was light and crisp, and we can't wait to try it on the boat (once we buy one again).  It was a GREAT hot weather, on the boat beer!  We continued on to a truck stop she knew had showers for the night.  We stayed the night in Plankinton, SD.

The Big Move, Part III - The third day of the trip

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The Big Move, Part II - The second day of the trip

We woke up pretty early, Mama was pretty uncomfortable!  I pulled out my trusty Smartphone to the Yelp App, as well as cross checking with the Urban Spoon app, which I LOVE, to find a highly rated restaurant in the area for some GREAT breakfast.  The treasure we found was AMAZING, we went to The Garnet Cafe.  We had to circle the block a few times to find somewhere to park our ridiculously long rig, but so glad we did!  We got to the door and there were people waiting outside, and the list wasn't too long.  Little did we know how few seats were inside so the wait took a while, but we figured with all the waiting from the locals and the incredible reviews it would be worth it... WE WERE SO RIGHT!  (even though I was starving and getting a little testy so I was eating a bag of Doritos I had in my purse).

If you are ever in Coeur d'Alene SERIOUSLY go here!  The menu was very unique, offering things like Crab, Avocado and Cream Cheese Omelets (which I had and was AMAZING!).  Also they were very reasonably priced!  It was so good that Jay and I joked perhaps this is all the further we would travel just to be able to eat there more!

After breakfast we hit the road.  Part of this roadtrip is for us to take a little extra time to stop and see some things we had never seen.  Although I went back to Sioux Falls to visit family quite a few times growing up, we never really had time to stop and see much, and we always just took I-90 the whole way.  So we decided we were going to venture off the beaten path some, while still trying to make decent time getting back to So Dak.  A special thanks to Jay's dad, John, who bought us an Atlas so we could find all these new, fun routes to explore! Neither of us had seen the Bitterroot National Forest, so that was on the agenda for the day!  We continued East to Missoula, MT on I-90, then South onto US-93.

The Bitterroot Mountians are a part of the Northern Rockies.  We drove through the Bitterroot Valley which is part of the Lewis and Clark Trail , that runs along the Idaho/Montana border.  I wanted to stop and read EVERYTHING... but had we done that we would still be there!  Here a few of my favorite facts that we collected along the way:

The communications between Lewis & Clark and the local natives had to go through FIVE translations!  Can you imagine how long just introductions and pleasantries must have taken!

Lewis & Clark were the first men the Chief had ever met that didn't have blankets!  Can you imagine they made it this far without blankets?!?!?!?

Here are a few of my favorite shots from the Valley - for those that know me well, I had to sort through MANY to get only a few :)

We stopped for the night outside of Billings, MT.

The Big Move, Part I - The first day of the trip

Okay, I know everyone has been patiently waiting... so many texts and emails wondering when I am going to get this up!  A new house with property is A LOT of work, not to mention moving in, getting settled, trying to get caught up on my school work... and to top it all off I had the flu last week, only to recover in time for Jay to be the sickest he has been in over 2 years!  So I'm going to write a bit now, and will continue to fit it in throughout this week! :)

As I mentioned before there was quite a bit of work we had to do to the trailer before we were ready to load it down with my storage unit!  We ended up having to reframe practically the whole back end.  More work will need done to finish the project, but this was enough to get us on the road.  Thanks to my great friend Tanya for letting us park/work on it in her back yard!  As well as my brother, Jason, for coming up and helping a few nights even though I know you were really tired from work!

Friday afternoon  (the 27th of April) we finally finished packing it all up into the trailer and hit the road.  We intended on leaving that morning, but I of course had a lot more crap to pack then either of us planned for.  With the trailer VERY loaded down, as well as practically no room in the truck (we folded up the Tempur-Pedic King sized bed in the back, stacked food and essentials for the trip behind it, all with the our babies riding on top of the bed (we were VERY FULL) - OFF WE WENT!  Our goal for the first night was to make it to Coeur d'Alene, ID...

We stopped about 30 minutes west of there at a rest stop for the night.  My ankle was on fire from the accelerator being pushed to the floor for so long!  Although there was hardly enough room back there for the dogs, somehow we managed to fit our bodies in there to sleep too... it took a lot of creative maneuvering, since the way the bed was folded up we only had about 3/4 the width of the Yukon to sleep on, and the direction we laid it the bed isn't long enough for Jay's long legs!  We finally got settled with both dogs sleeping ON MAMA, so he had enough room!

Update... short and sweet

I know I haven't been updating anyone... we don't have cell service or internet at the house until this week... until then it is a 45 mile drive each way for internet, so I am using my net time for homework...  I promise to get back to everyone soon! <3

Jay has started his new job, and LOVES IT.  We are loving it.  More to come this week.  Including lots and lots of pictures!

The adventure is beginning!  Before it has even began though, we have had a few snafu-skis...  We were originally intending on leaving when I returned from my San Diego trip with my mom at the beginning of April.  When I returned though the Harley had not sold yet.  So we were here for another week or so to sell the Harley.  Then, after breaking down and deciding we were not going to purchase a trailer and just rent from UHAUL (they wanted almost $600 for 8 days!), we found a 27 foot travel trailer for $850!  So we have been working for a little over a week on it, it needed TLC and we have been working hard!

We intended on being ready so we could just leave straight from the AWESOME going away party Jay's family in Oregon threw for us last Saturday, but we did not get the trailer completed in time.  So we decided to just drive down for the weekend and come back to finish.  The food was amazing, company fantastic, and weather was beautiful!  It was 80 degrees when we arrived on Saturday, and 85 when we left on Sunday.  All the windows were down, Jay was driving, and I had my foot hanging out the window enjoying the sunshine... and his phone rang.  Without thinking he turned down the music and rolled up the windows, trapping my foot in the electric window!  It knocked the wind out of me so I wasn't even able to scream, I started waving frantically to get his attention and he released the pressure.  The rest of the trip was spent with my ankle elevated and iced.  That has made me less than full force in helping us this week on our trailer.

I am a strong believer in EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON, and that was proven to be true again this last week.  In the family, we had a medical incident that made us both glad we were still here (family has asked we do not post anything online regarding who or what happened).

Soooooo.... we intend on leaving tomorrow!