I'm back from my two week long vacation to South Dakota. It was... Interesting, to say the least.

The first day, we drove for about 8 hours, and stopped at my Aunt & Uncle's house. They've got two kids, a 4-5 year old boy (Nicholas) and a 7-8 year old girl (Hannah). I can't believe I forgot their ages... Nicholas wanted to play with his Hot Wheels and Nerf Guns for a while which was... uh... (you get the idea) We had pizza for dinner, played some Wii Guitar Hero, and went to bed.

The second day, we left at like 7:30, drove for another 8 hours, then stopped at a nice hotel with a pool. The pool was warm, there was a hot tub as well, and the breakfast was good, too.

The next day, we did 2 hours of driving and stopped at our family reunion in Minnesota. For the first two hours it was rather awkward, but then I found some people to play with (they were 3 and 6 years younger than me, however...) We played some tag, hide-n-seek, ate hundreds of cookies, etc. It was pretty fun, actually.

After dinner, we left, and drove for another two hours to find a hotel. Little did we know, it was Sturgis Week, and ALL the motorcyclists from ALL OVER THE COUNTRY were going to almost the same place as us. We couldn't find a hotel, so we ended up stopping at a campground (it looked more like an empty trailer park to me) and sleeping in our camper.

The fourth day, we finally arrived at our destination! We set up our camper in a nice campground in the Black Hills area.

The fifth day (the first day of actual vacation), we went to Mount Rushmore. It was really, really stupid. It's an unfinished rock sculpture of some of the best presidents. What's so special about it, really? We spent like two hours there walking on the trails they set up. I did buy a nice miniature version of Mount Rushmore, though.

After that, I lost track of what days we did what, so I'll just describe what we did.

We went to this Mammoth site, which is a live paleontologist site, with Mammoth fossils 'n stuff. It was pretty cool, and I bought a little Stuffed Mammoth for myself.

We went to Devil's Tower, which was better than Mount Rushmore, but so jam-packed with motorcycles it ruined the experience.

Everything else was too boring to even mention. By the way, it RAINED EVERY SINGLE DAY.

After four days in the Black Hills area, we went to the Badlands and stayed at a nice KOA Campground. It had a pool, WiFi, breakfast, and dinner. ALSO SHADE! YESSS!

The Badlands were very beautiful, and fun to climb. Sadly, it was really hot. And there were flies--lots of flies. Which brings me to another story:

One day, a fly flew into our car and landed on my sister. It stayed there for a while, and she thought it was on her because she was pretty. But, if you think of the things flies usually are attracted to... Anyway, I opened my window (I hate flies) and she cried and screamed when it flew out. That really shows a lot about her, don't you think? By the way, she's 5 days from her eleventh birthday.

On our second day there, we were pulled over by a cop for speeding. We were twelve miles over the limit... The cop checked my dad's license, but it was clean so he let us off with a warning. But not before he inspected our car for contraband.

One of the days, my parents decided to drive us to an Indian Reservation. What did I learn? Indians are lazy, drunk slobs who can't bother to clean up their towns.

Over time, my parents noticed that money kept disappearing from their wallets. I told them my sister has been stealing from them. They didn't believe me. Twenty minutes later? She's stealing from them. After hours of screaming and crying, she calmed down (Sort of) and being in the camper was bearable again.

On the drive back, we decided to shorten our trip into two 12-hour days of driving. The first night, we stayed at a nice Ramada hotel. We got a huuuuge discount ($100) because my dad found a coupon at one of the rest areas we stopped at.

For dinner, we stopped at a Baker's Square, WHICH IS THE BEST RESTAURANT ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. I had some pancakes with strawberries on top, then a slice of orange pie. IT WAS LIKE EATING PURE AWESOME.

We waited an hour, then went swimming (at 9:10 PM, lol). The next day we had a nice breakfast, then entered the last day of driving.

We ate lunch at KFC and had dinner in the car (we stopped at a Wal-Mart). Now, at the end of the drive, as we were driving down my street, we crossed our fingers hoping our house would still be there. We turned the corner into our little court, and noticed that a bunch of trees in our yard had fallen down. I could have sworn one of them fell on our deck, but luckily, none were even close to the house. One of our neighbors walked over to greet us, and told us there was a tornado-like thing that went through while we were gone. Apparently it rained for two days, and we lost power for another two days. Luckily we were gone for that.

It was probably the worst vacation I've ever been on. You have no idea how happy I am to be back.

Unfortunately, our digital camera died the day before our trip, so we had to buy some disposable cameras. No pictures for a while, guys.

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tl;dr?

The trip was horrible.