COMFORTABLY UNCOMFORTABLE

Traveling by night has its advantages. Less people on the road, less tiresome Missouri landscape flashing by. We drove 12 hours and ended up in Rapid City, South Dakota, early this morning. I was lucky enough to get a lightning show from St. Joseph, Missouri, until Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Speeding through the Midwest is made infinitely better with huge flashes from the east that light up the night and remind you how insane nature is and you begin to feel really small, in a good way.

I think that’s important in life. To put yourself in situations that take you out of your comfortable routine and make you uncomfortable. That’s something that I’ve learned to love about travel. You leave behind the comforts of home, (your bed, your shower, your fridge, your cable/internet plan), and you live life like a nomad. It’s kind of fun to know that if you made a mistake and your hotel reservations were screwed up, you’d be in some regards homeless.

Especially here in Rapid City, because Sturges started today and there is a constant vibration of leathered, tatted, handlebar-mustached men riding their Harleys late into night. But it’s all part of it.

Travel makes you realize how important it is to be adaptable and how important a good sense of humor is. Dad and I got to Mt. Rushmore at 6 a.m. and we went through it completely alone until close to 7 a.m. But once we did that, we had until 3 p.m. before we could check into our hotel for the night.

As much as it sucked to be stuck in the in-between, feeling basically homeless, surrounded by Sturges, we somehow managed to make the most of our time. We walked around downtown, had an amazing breakfast of blueberry pancakes, replaced a broken brake light, washed the car, and ate Wendy’s frostys while reading for a solid hour. This trip has already been perfectly imperfect. Uncomfortable in all the right ways. Here’s to another 12 hours in the car tomorrow.