Day four of our trip out west. Yesterday we packed up early from the state park and took off to the Badlands. I posted just one of the ton of pictures I took of the Badlands yesterday. It was unlike any landscape I’ve ever seen, but only slightly more desolate than Riceville. Something I found interesting was the mud there was a light khaki color, and had the consistency of modelling clay. It dried just as hard, too- I still haven’t gotten it all off my shoes! Halfway through the day my camera died, so up until now I’ve been using my phone. At some point during this I discovered a feature that allows panoramic shots, which is AMAZING. That night we went to see Mount Rushmore, which is a little smaller than I imagined it would be. We also found an entrance to a cave laden with golden artifacts close by, but that’s a story for another day.

Today we left from South Dakota and traveled to where we are now, just outside of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It turns out that ice melts from the mountaintops around the eastern entrance to the park during the day, so the only times you’re allowed on the road is before 10 am or after 8 pm. Seeing as how the office closes at 5, we had to stop here for the night. To get here, though, we took highway 14 (or was it 16? I’m pretty sure they’re the same road until it forks). It’s a scenic drive through the mountains. At some point on the downward slope, our brakes burnt up from so much use that they were actually smoking. It gave us a good excuse to spend more time than usual at a scenic overlook, though.

Books- yesterday I finished the Hunger Games series. I have to say, they were pretty dark to be kids’ books. The end of the last book was pretty depressing, actually. The epilogue is happy in a way, but the characters never seemed to be able to move past everything that happened. Still, it was a great series and I enjoyed it. Today I mostly napped and listened to music, so I’ll pick up reading something else tomorrow.

Thoughts from the last couple of days: One of the reasons I love traveling, or probably the biggest reason, is that by seeing different things you broaden your horizons. When you come to the place that you accept how little you understand about the world, that is when your understanding starts to grow. International travel and seeing foreign cultures has done this for me especially, but that’s a rabbit trail I’m too tired to chase. On this trip, I’m just reminded of how big the world is, and how small we are in comparison. Just looking at the landscape here does that to you. Being able to see fifty miles any direction you look is breathtaking. After you look out at a distant mountain face for so long, it begins to look as if it isn’t real, like someone just reached out and painted them on the sky. Any attempt I make to put into words the vastness of what I have seen would be a horribly futile effort. I could never convey that. No words, no photo, no painting can show how beautiful or expansive the earth is. It is something you have to get out and experience for yourself. We drove through mountains that are still capped with snow, despite it being summer, and through plains with winds so strong it nearly pushed us off the road. Oh, and I’ll let you in on a little secret. We don’t actually have mountains in Tennessee. The Appalachians are really more like largeish hills compared to the Rockies.

The only thing that has really bothered me the last few days is that a tourist is expected to look and not touch. I wanted to climb up every crag in the badlands, slide down into every valley. I wanted to make snowmen and hike into the ravines to see what kind of animals lived there. The more amazing what I see is, the harder it is not to physically engage it. I guess that urge will be sated tomorrow when I’m hiking around in Yellowstone Forest.