From Rainy Hikes to the Rodeo Nights

Our two month van-aversary has officially come and gone! Before our adventures in Wisconsin with Cheryl, we spent a little time in Minnesota. We found a job via Craigslist gigs, working for Magic Bounce, an inflatable ride company that needed people to work a small township fair. At first the job was fun and easy — we started out working a little inflatable slide and quickly realized we were not actually supposed to enforce any rules in particular. Under 48 inches? Eh, go ahead. Only one ticket, but no one's in line? Ride five, six, ten times! No one cared about much of anything.

But the second day we were stationed at the biggest ride in the area, a four story water slide and that's when things got a little...slippery. Our 12 hour shift included next to zero instruction, lot's of criticism for our grumbling old man boss, who was incapable of actually answering questions, lot's and lot's of mud — essentially standing in a mud pit for hours on end while trying to wrangle children and clean kiddy pools that were supposed to serve to clean kids' dirty feet before they got on the ride, it included horrible parents actively encouraging their kids to ignore our instruction, forcing their too-small kids to climb up the ride, even when they'd failed to do so three times previous and ended up in tears, incredibly rude children and ultimately a soggy, filthy, disgusting sense of loathing for all humanity and especially for everything related to inflatable water slides. We both concluded that we preferred a rice-only diet and perpetual constipation to this kind of horeshit employment. Thanks but no thanks, Magic Bounce. Instead of working our third shift, we went to Minnesota and stayed with some wonderful humans at a cooperative in Minneapolis, took some hard-earned showers and enjoyed a musical potluck.

After our adventures in Wisconsin, chronicled in our guest blog by Tressa's mom, we turned back West and re-entered Minnesota. This time we headed to Duluth, a cute little town where we stayed with a wonderful grandmotherly goddess named Gene in a magical colorful house full of treasures and treats. Gene talked to us about her huge family and her many adventures, she fed us, gave us wonderful thrift shop suggestions, and sent us on our way with beautiful stones and even a hearty plant to replace some of our more miserable succulents.

We continued West from Minnesota and met up with Evan (Tressa's boy) and his father, who were on a big fast-paced road trip around the country together. We joined forces for a little trip to Yellowstone, where we were rained on relentlessly, but still enjoyed the vast and beautiful national park with its incredible plains, and its colorful and smelly mud pots, hot springs, and geysers. We spotted elk, moose, more bison, and lot's of other small critters. It was fun joining up with another traveling duo, sharing meals and sharing stories, even in the rain.

After we parted ways, the two of them continued into the Pacific timezone and we two meandered into the Grand Tetons where we took a gorgeous and rainy lake-side hike and spent some time with a goofy looking moose before heading back into Idaho.

We broke our record for not showering, 5 days for Tressa and 6 for Kelsey, but were lucky enough to find another great host in tiny Twin Falls, Idaho. Tasha had a super creative space, filled with handmade art and thrifted knick knacks, and we were able to make some new friends, both human and animal. We also got a chance to meet with one of Kelsey's mom's childhood friends in Twin Falls, and did some more Burning Man thrifting. Kelsey even got a  bike, which is now haphazardly bungeed and bike locked to our roof!

Kelsey's cousin Riann lives in Idaho, so we scooped her up on our way into Logan, Utah, where we got our first taste of the rodeo, a rowdy experience made all the stranger by the fact that Utah is so vehemently anti-alcohol that you can't even get beer at the fair. However, junk food was in hot demand.

Now, we're spending a relaxing day in Logan, working on all our various projects before we do some more CouchSurfing. We both feel quite strange creeping our way back towards the West Coast, knowing we will eventually be less than four hours from home, but that our journey is only a third over and we will not be re-entering California for a long while yet.

Couchsurfing & Camping in the Midwest

The demolition derby in Casper, Wyoming smells like dirt and exhaust and fried food. Tressa is wearing an absurd red cowboy hat she got from a thrift store for four dollars and an old man calls her cowgirl, so we know we’re not blending in. It’s hot and loud and thrilling for a while. We see mothers bouncing three-month-old babies at intermission, while the announcer says not to go nowhere, corrects his own grammar, and then does it again. The little boy behind us is cheering for his mom, driving a red white and blue striped beater that gets shoved out of arena.

Hot Springs, South Dakota is like traveling back in time, all faded red brick facades in one little strip. We drive to the Cascade Falls natural pool and swim for a while, hoping the chilly water will wash some of the sticky Midwestern heat off our skin. We are officially in the Midwest. We see bumper stickers like, “Don’t blame me, I voted for the American” and big billboards proclaiming, “Life is a gift, not a choice.” We park in what we think will be a quiet neighborhood to sleep, and are perplexed by the voices carrying up and down the street, footsteps at 1am on a Sunday in a town less than four square miles in total. We wake up between roadblocks in a construction zone and while Kelsey jogs Tressa discovers that the two coffee shops in town have both been shut down.

The Wind Cave National Park is obviously renowned for it’s cave, but tours are expensive so we opt out and amuse ourselves photographing bison, meandering through the hot, windy hills and trying to get close to prairie dogs. We have a couchsurfing host in Rapid City that warns us that parking for Mt. Rushmore is absurdly expensive, so we cruise past the monument, which is strange and small in the face of the awe-inspiring black hills, all that immense rock, jutting out in round, bulbous formations. We pull to the side of the road and take a few photos.

Every now and then you meet a person and you wish they were a character you had invented, that their life was a story you’d written. Our host in Rapid City is like that, this tattooed twenty something with a beer in hand, two kids, and a quiet tow-headed friend that lives in a tent when he’s not sleeping on the couch. He shows us the wine he’s making, the kombucha he’s brewing, the greenhouse he’s building and the aquaponics system he envisions for it. He shows us the squirrel he is training squirrel to eat from his hand, and takes us to Cabela’s in his beat up hotwired Ford with a chair nailed to the floor as a backseat, a much more legit rape van than even our bulky Chevy. At Capela’s we lay on cots, try on absurd camo outfits, photograph the stuffed bears and buffalo, and Skyler shops for his new home — a hefty 16x14 tent with a chimney. All he needs now, he says, is somewhere to put his couchsurfers.

We don’t know what to expect when we head to The Badlands National Park, and it blows our minds. It’s insanely gorgeous, chalky red striped rock formations where big horned sheep take leisurely naps and then rolling prairie hillsides full of more bison and more prairie dogs and unfortunately, biting flies and mosquitoes for days. But their primitive campground is free. We camp there for two days, hike around, enjoy an incredible sunset over the rocks and some beautiful clear starry skies. On the second night, we nearly run into an ENORMOUS bison that’s lurking in the ditch, contemplating crossing the dirt road we’re driving down in the pitch black. Later, we read that the bison is actually considered more dangerous than a grizzly bear. Terrifying.

We find a couchsurfing host in Sioux Falls, one of the easternmost cities in South Dakota, and actually the biggest city in the state. We arrive loopy and full of weird energy and are excited to find that our hosts are a group of fabulously entertaining goofy men. They try and teach us to play a drinking game that we fail at miserably, and we all go to the bar and have a wonderful night involving PBR, Phil Collins karaoke, and riding in the trunk of someone’s car. In the morning, we indulge in pizza and Lord of the Rings before rousing ourselves to head to a little lake for some lazy fun in the sun. Now we’re headed South to check out Omaha, Nebraska before spending some time in Iowa.