In the summer of 2014, Stéphane and I drove across the country to move him to Michigan for graduate school. Along the road in South Dakota, we saw many awesome sights, including Crazy Horse, Mount Rushmore, the capital at Pierre and Sioux Falls. The Badlands — my favorite — is in a separate post.
Late at night, Stéphane and I adventured into Crazy Horse monument. We caught the sculpture as the sun was setting, and were able to explore the attached museum and see the photography documenting the SLOW process that is Crazy Horse. I was pretty excited to be there. Just a few months before, the original artist’s wife had died. Outside one of the exits, there was a cool gate, and this blurred picture came about.
Stéphane and I saw Mount Rushmore twice: once at night on July 26th and again early in the morning, before sunrise. After spending the night in a horse campground scared out of our minds, we woke up and arrived at the national monument just as it opened. I think it should be seen twice by everyone. But honestly, being some of the first people there in the morning and exploring the trail as the sun rose — it was gorgeous, and so much fun!
One of my goals is to see every state’s capital building. Being only 30 minutes away from Pierre, South Dakota was too much of a draw, so Stéphane indulged me and we were off! We got to go inside the capital building (luckily) and explore quite a bit. Parts of it were under renovation, but one interesting area was a cloakroom for the representatives. Behind these doors were two bathrooms – actually separate rooms – despite the fact that they look like the same room. It was just too interesting to not photograph…
Our last stop before the hotel in Minnesota was to have a meal in Sioux Falls, SD. Stéphane and I read some good things about it, found a nice cafe on Yelp and set our sights on it. It turned out to be a great find! The cafe overlooked the actual falls (in the photo) of Sioux Falls, and there was a beautiful park and cascading water. I found those ducks below and took a bunch of photos!
All in all, we drove from Seattle to Minneapolis where I flew back to the PNW. On the way, we went through Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Montana, Yellowstone, the Black Hills, Wall, the Badlands, Pierre and Sioux Falls before arriving in Minnesota. It was an incredible journey filled with many adventures, amazing sights and much time together.
