Kiah's Travel Journal - Day 2

Saturday - June 12 (click here to read Day 1)

With great reluctance we slowly crawled out of bed early Saturday morning. We agreed on a breakfast suitable to everyone’s taste buds, Perkins muffins! Thankfully the tongue has the fastest reproducing cells in the body and Lani’s sweet taste buds were up and running again so she could thoroughly enjoy her muffin.

After the challenge of finding "Paula" in the hotel parking garage, Mom had trouble getting out. First she was paranoid about scraping the car on the ramp turns, and then she couldn’t figure out how to go down. After arriving at the top level Mom said, “There must be a more efficient way to do this!

As soon as she said this, we noticed that we had gone in a full circle and were coming to the “up” ramp again. Lani pipes up dryly from the back seat, “Maybe you should try the down ramp Mom”! We all burst out laughing as we realized the down and up ramps were right next to each other, but instead of going down all this time she had kept going up.

We stopped at the state capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota. It was really pretty, and we had a lot of fun running around and climbing on statues. Amy and I raced from point to point and I felt like a little kid again running everywhere. Nice to know that I still have the dominance and speed of being the older sister as well!


We were most excited to find a huge statue of Sacagawea. We feel an affinity to her since we named the GPS after her.

There was also a huge buffalo that none of us could climb up

I was also delighted to get Starbucks before getting out of Dodge. Nothing quite like sunshine, a car full of people you love, magnificent scenery, and Starbucks to start a day!!

Even with “Sacky’s” help, Mom got lost leaving Bismarck. We finally got back on the interstate and I decided I was still pretty tired and had better kick back for the sake of the family and myself. I had worked a lot right before leaving on our little adventure and was still much in need of catching up on my sleep.

I woke up at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was so GORGEOUS!! The badlands are unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The shapes and colors seemed almost unnatural, like someone transplanted them from a different time and dimension. The Badlands are another portion of creation that testifies and gives glory to one of God’s many characteristics and attributes: beauty. We serve and love a creative and beautiful God, and our creative and beautiful world is just a small taste of that beauty and the beauty yet to come.

We ganged up on Mom to talk her out of staying longer. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to see it, but we would never get to our destination if we stayed there. As we drove through the badlands we listened to Rich Mullins song, “Calling out Your Name”. The song perfectly fit the scenery. We listened to it several times, and it was one of those moments that will be locked away forever in our memories.

I suggested reading the Bible aloud while we drove. I first read Proverbs 12 as it was the June 12^th. Then I switched to Ephesians, although I didn’t say where I was reading. The first verse of Ephesians Ch. 1 says, “To God’s holy people in Ephesus…” but it wasn’t until I got down to verse 3 that Mom burst out triumphantly like she knew the winning question to Jeopardy, “Ephesians! You’re reading Ephesians!"

I went along with it and said sarcastically, “Really mom, what gave that away for you?”
She said, “The part about heavenly places!”“Oh, not the part about ‘To God’s Holy people in Ephesus’ in verse one?”

At this we both started laughing, and if we had been able we would’ve been rolling on the floor laughing.

For lunch we stopped at Wendy’s per my request. I’m an avid fan of Vanilla Frostys so thoroughly enjoyed that meal. Although that night the girls complained about the chili I ate for lunch!

Amy and Lani watched Here Come the Brides in the backseat. After a few hours of sleep I came out of hibernation and crawled to the backseat to watch Leap Year with them. Yeah, Red Box.

After the movie we heard Subway calling our
names, so we stopped in a small town to eat supper. We also visited a cool gift shop with an amazing jelly bean and chocolate display, but we demonstrated self-control by leaving empty handed and keeping our waistlines intact.

We drove a few more hours, but the day was winding down and we still were four hours away from our destination. Mom looks over at me, "How do you feel about camping?"

I gave here a look that said, “You know how I feel about camping.” But I knew it was our best option, and in all fairness to camping I hadn’t tried it in years so thought I should be open-mindedtired, had a headache, wanted nothing more to go to bed, and we still had the job of making camp before us.
As we drove around the campground looking for an open spot, I said, “Why on earth would people, who have perfectly good houses, food, and showers, spend this much money to be miserable?” Mom and the girls thought I was being a little pessimistic, and it turns out I was!

Quotes From the Day:

Lani – (talking to herself in the backseat) “I get cranky when I lose my pencil”

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Mom – “Amy can you please look up on Sacky or the map how far it is from Bozeman to Yellowstone?”

(Amy wasn’t responding fast enough so Mom asked impatiently again, “Amy, how far is
Yellowstone from Bozeman!?”

Lani – (Pipes up in her chipmunk voice) “About 3 centimeters!”