Road Trip - Day 2

Day 2 of our road trip started out with a nice sleep in and a great breakfast. We were all still so happy that we didn't stay at the Sportsmans Inn.

Rejoicing that we got to stay at this nice place for the night. 

We started off the day with a short drive to Chimney Rock. Now, I was actually pretty excited about this stop because of a game I played in elementary school called The Oregon Trail (anyone?? Did anyone else play this game??) Chimney Rock was always a major site along the trail, but usually somebody would come down with dysentery and wouldn't make it any farther than Chimney Rock and we'd have to bury them. The Oregon Trail was literally my favorite game in elementary school (closely followed by the Bubblegum Machine), and so naturally I was very excited. The rock was pretty cool, especially because it was kind of in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't anything else around except for that rock. We read at the visitor's center that many, many pioneer journals had accounts of them writing their names on the rock as they passed through. 

There was also a little cemetery a short way up the road that had a few pioneer graves in it. We stopped to walk around, and saw some pretty interesting graves.

This was the oldest one we could find. Pretty cool that she was a member of the Martin Handcart company! 

After enjoying the cemetery, we stopped at this cute little place on the way out. We found out that the lady that runs this shop has lived in Nebraska almost her entire life - she spent a few years in Pittsburgh, but then came back. She lives across the street from the shop on a farm that her and her husband run. She made us a pretty tasty milkshake, and while we ate she told us her life story. It was fascinating to hear about her family and her life's adventures. I've found out that this is definitely the best part about traveling anywhere - interacting with the locals and getting to know the culture better. It was so fun!

Her cute little shop

Our next pit stop was in Alliance, Nebraska. The lady at the shop told us about a few fun things to see there, so we took her advice and headed on up. The first place we stopped was at a place called Carhenge. It is just like Stonehenge, except made with cars. Really weird, but really awesome to see up close.

I guess the site has become really popular with other "car art" enthusiasts. I never really knew there were such enthusiasts, but there are. I'm sure you can tell what these things are.

Even the benches there were made of car parts.

Carhenge was great, and we were so glad that we stopped to see it. The next place the lady recommended to us was called Dobby's Frontier town. There was a man named Dobby (all I could think of was a little house elf with big round eyes!!) who made it a hobby to find old, authentic, western-style buildings and have them shipped to this place in Alliance, and he made a little town of it. Cool in theory, but not in practice. He never had too much money to fund the whole operation, so the houses were all kind of run down and gross. There was a man who worked there who offered to give us a tour, along with another group of people that was there, and he wanted to spend about 20 minutes in each house! (There were about 15 little houses to see). We didn't have that kind of time and it was sooo hot, so we just kind of snuck out of the tour group and saw the houses on our own.

Main street of the town

The jail

The saloon

The piano in the saloon

Our best poker faces

The quilter's house - mom's favorite stop!

The school

The school desks

This wasn't even part of the frontier town, but just outside of it. I thought it made the neatest picture ever. I don't even really know what it is, but I loved the color and the angle of it, so I had to snap a picture.

Okay, now we need to back up a bit. That morning before we had left our hotel, my dad had sent us some video clips that he thought we would enjoy, and we watched them while we were getting ready. They were both about people who had stopped to do an act of kindness for somebody else. One person on a motorcycle stopped to help a lady who was stuck in her Jazzi wheelchair, and the other was a biker who stopped to help a blind man get back on the sidewalk. So, in the back of our minds all day were these videos about doing something to help somebody else. So - as we are driving to South Dakota, we see a man on the side of the road in the middle of NOWHERE when it is over 100 degrees outside walking in jeans and a long sleeve shirt with a bag slung over his shoulder. We drove by him and then looked at each other and wondered what in the world he was doing there. It was so so hot, and seriously no town around for miles. We thought that he was probably so thirsty, so we turned around and drove back to give him a water bottle. He gratefully took it, and kept on walking. We turned back around and kept on driving. Then, before we got very far, we started thinking that maybe we should pick him up and drive him to the next town. We knew nothing about this man, and we were just a car full of three girls, but we felt so bad for him walking in the heat like that. We were all a little nervous, but we wanted to do something kind like those videos we had seen this morning. So - we turned around again and went and asked him if he needed a ride. He said he would be so grateful. He hopped in and on we drove. We learned that he was from West Virginia and had walked/gotten rides all the way from there on his way to Billings, Montana. We asked him what was in Billings, and he told us a new life was up there. He said he'd heard there was work there, and he needed a start-over in life, so that's where he was headed. We eventually talked to him about our church and how we were members of it, and asked if he'd seen any missionaries. He said, "Oh yeah. I've seen them missionaries before. Always ridin' around on their bikes!" Haha. We told him that if he ever saw them again he needed to stop and listen to them. If anyone needs a life change, our church is a good place to start. Hopefully he really will stop and listen to them if he ever meets them again. We drove with him for about 40 minutes, and then we dropped him off at the next town while we went to find some lunch. It was a crazy, crazy adventure that I would never, ever do by myself, but it was fun to do it with my mom and my sister.

Our destination that night was Custer, South Dakota. We got there in the evening and wandered around the main street for a bit. There was a really yummy candy shop where I bought some chocolate fudge (it was delicious!), and then we ate dinner at The Purple Pie Place because it caught our attention as we were driving by.

See? Wouldn't this catch your eye too?

The food here was just okay, but we got to talk to the owners of the place and hear their story. They were from California and they come to live in South Dakota and run this restaurant during tourist season every summer. They said sales have gone up exponentially since they painted it purple and pink. They were so cute, and again, it reminded me of the best part of traveling - interacting with the locals. We were too full for pie, and tired from a long day of driving, so we headed back to our hotel after we ate so we could get rested up for what the next day had in store for us......Mt. Rushmore!!!