The most beautiful state so far....

So I'm going to overlap Molly's post just a tad. I wanted to add a couple more pics from our first stop in South Dakota, just to emphasize how incredible that state really is. We pulled off at a simple rest stop to take in the weather. This is the same stop as the picture of Pern attacking Christie in front of a humungous thunder cloud. It was breathtaking. Even the dogs were in awe of the fields of grass, cactus and cattle that stretched further than we could comprehend.

And as the clouds rolled in we realized that we would be chased out of the rest stop by acorn-sized drops of rain.

(Find Perna!)

The next morning, after a ridiculous visit to Wall Drug we literally stumbled upon the most breathtaking sight of this entire trip so far. The Badlands are an unbelievable reminder that human kind is quite inconsequential from the perspective of our Mother Earth. She's been working on these immeasurable works of art for many millennia and all we can do is pull our car to the side of the road and look at it. It was a humbling experience, to say the least.

(check out how pensive I am)

But don't think that we didn't have a great time, regardless of how insignificant we felt! We explored a bit.

(Find Perna again!)

And posed for some photo ops.

And we were so excited we had a hard time containing ourselves.

And one of the most amazing aspects of the Badlands is that it rises up from the plains.

We found this long boardwalk that took us closer to the middle of one of the plains just up the road from those beautiful mountains.

That night we discovered the Black Hills. It's amazing that South Dakota contains so many landscapes. The Black Hills were surreal. They reminded us of Vermont and New Hampshire, particularly the Franconia region.

The hills were smaller and cozy and covered in pine trees. There are actually no deciduous trees, so lush green grass is able to grow in between the tall pines because they aren't being smothered by rotting fallen leaves (that's Molly's observation...I really picked a smart one!). Very strange to see so much grass in a forest. Eventually we wound our way up to parts of the forest that seemed to be victim of a fire or maybe even clear cutting. There were entire hills of trees like this. I don't really know why they looked that way. Strange.

That night we stayed in Lead, SD, a sleepy little gold mining town built right into the hills.

This is our hotel. Classy, huh?

And here is President Obama. Pern and I read about him in the paper the day before in Wall, SD. He was on his way to some sort of Presidential Statue garden. (He really does have big ears!) We were so excited to actually see him in person!

And here we are at dinner that night.

We had a lovely time with veggie nachos and awesome pulled pork (not as awesome as Uncle Chris's pulled pork though, more on that later).

So South Dakota wins so far. Such a beautiful state with so much variety. Absolutely worth a visit.

Next is Wyoming and Colorado. Those beauties need some digestion time in my head though so there will be lots on them later. Till then, dear readers, sweetest dreams. -Jared