South Dakota is a Great Plains state. We know very little about this state and come with open minds to see what we can find here. The weather is glorious and we can see flat farmlands (mostly corn) with a few rolling hills here and there spreading out endlessly under bright blue skies and cheerful white clouds.

I think the best parts of this trip have been the pleasant surprises. The unexpected gems we stumbled onto along our route. Sioux Falls, SD, was such a gem. I did not expect much of this small midwestern city in the middle of nowhere. It is the biggest city in South Dakota with a growing population of right around 200,000, but we had not heard anything about it prior to stopping here today. Sioux falls lies on the falls of the Great Sioux River and it is a beautiful, vibrant and proud little city. The falls lie at the heart of Falls Park, and this is where we start our tour of the city. There are quite a few people here enjoying the fabulous views, fishing in the river, or walking or riding their bikes on the many paths of this expansive park. We hop onto our bicycles and follow the bike path along the falls and into a clean, welcoming, vibrant little downtown. New construction all around bespeaks the success and wellbeing of this little gem in the Great Plains. There are bike paths all along the river, cool little shops and busy restaurants and breweries along the main street, and a park with a stage which apparently hosts 50 free concerts on the lawn each summer. The vibe is cheerful, as are the residents.

But South Dakota is far from “wow-ing” us! Sioux Falls was only the first pleasant surprise in what we had thought was for us mostly going to be a “drive-through” on our westward trek.

Wall Drug is a bizarre, highly popular roadside tourist trap with a hilarious story: The owners started posting signs pointing to this drug store (now much more than that) in the tiny desert town of Wall, SD, to lure in people who, like us were passing by on I-90. The signs advertising free ice water and 5-cent coffee can now be found in places as remote at Seoul, Korea, and on buses in London, England.

Badlands National Park was an alien and impressive landscape teeming with wildlife!

Mount Rushmore is a must see! Very impression to learn its history and the crazy amount of work that went into carving this masterpiece.

Custer State Park was another marvel – we saw pronghorn, bison, groundhogs, and breathtaking vistas of red rock walls along tight winding roads through the forest.

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We left our home in Los Angeles, CA, on March 15th, as planned. (Technically speaking it was the 16th, as we left well after midnight…). After months of prepping and planning Patrick, the kids and I were beyond excited to be off on our grand adventure at last!

We spent our first night on the road in a parking lot not more than an hour from home, but it felt far from the ordinary and very exciting nevertheless. We have months of adventure on the road ahead of us!

We spent our first day away from home hiking in Calimesa/Yucaipa. It’s hot and dry already, but it’s a glorious day to be outside.

At night, after Patrick is done working, we drive towards Joshua Tree National Park. Just south of the park is a patch of BLM land we are hoping to camp on. Less than 3 miles from our destination we get a tremendous scare when our little Fiat starts detaching from the RV! In the dark on the freeway late at night, Fiat careening wildly back and forth behind us, Patrick manages somehow to get us safely off the freeway onto an offramp, Fiat and RV intact. Our tow bar has failed (we still are not sure to this day what exactly went wrong), it is bent and one of the arms came off. We are stranded on an offramp under the glorious desert skies in the middle of nowhere with a tow car that won’t start and two little kids. It takes the kindness of strangers passing by to help us get our Fiat jump started and off on the road again to our BLM campsite.

Our attempts to get our tow bar repaired or replaced while traveling across the US span many weeks and we end up driving the RV and our Fiat separately across the country all the way to Florida… not exactly the road trip we were hoping for.

Our last day in California (March 17) for many, many weeks, we spend hiking the remote desert and playing at a little lake along the Colorado River just next to the border with Arizona.

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