Expanding the horizons Ep 1: Many people told me I'm crazy going on a road trip to South Dakota.

Right now I'm sitting at home and having a little break from work. I have to finish some campaign ideas for my new client which is a small bike shop that makes custom bikes. I don't really enjoy working long hours but a promise is a promise. I always try to stay positive while working long hours. One thing I do is I share my travel stories with my friends to pass some positive energy around and see some smiling faces.

As I was living in Breckenridge, Colorado for three years I wanted to see the most monumental thing out there in the US, and one of them is Mt. Rushmore with the 4 guys up there carved into the mountain and staring at the visitors, you know them. Tell me, what is greater out there than huge heads carved into the peak of a mountain? Everyone asked me why I want to go there so bad. Well I got pretty tired of all the explaining and people trying to tell me where to go on a road trip where I could see more stuff and so on.

So one day my friend Steph and her boyfriend asked me whether I want to go with them on a road trip to South Dakota to see Mt. Rushmore or stay at home and talk about the roadtrip for the next three years. Sure, I said, so we went for a week on the road trip.

At first I didn't expect much from South Dakota as everyone said there are 100 more place to see before going there. But I was pretty excited to see Mt. Rushmore and taking a photo up there, maybe go with a helicopter for a ride too. Just type into google "South Dakota trip" and you'll see the next day google bombarding you with ads about pretty cool helicoper tours over there. To get there we had to pass through half of Colorado and Wyoming which by the way wasn't exciting for my friends because they drive that way everytime when they're going back home. I found the landscape amazing. We had great weather, blue skyes and few white clouds. Yellow golden fields left and right with a few cool hills poping out now and then. We saw bunch of cattle on the way there, a few bizons too. I was pretty excited I never sas bizons in real life. There were a bunch of farms with siloses and windmills just like from the movies as I like to say. If you don't know I'm from Croatia so you'll hear me and others from Europe often say "like from the movies".

First stop was Chayenne. It was so cool to be there because I just finished watching Hell on Wheels, AMC's TV show. Which by the way I really recommend to you guys. The show is based in the time when people were building the first train tracks accross Amerika and Chayenne was one of the first cities they built along the way. We were pretty hungry so we stopped at Sonic. Besides all the food I had a peanut butter milkshake. I love that stuff, in Europe we don't have anything peanut butter flavoured except just peanut butter. My roommate from Breck was telling me all the time about the sweet stuff from Sonic as he was working in one, down in Oklahoma.

We made our way to the border between Wyoming and South Dakota and that was, I need to tell you guys, a true feeling of freedom. No border patrol, no one stoping us, no police, just passing through. Croatia is in the European Union but we still have borders like half of european countries, so you must stop and wait, sometimes for an hour, to show your ID. Of course we stopped there to take a few photos with the sign. The red roads are pretty interesting. I wish all the roads had cool colours. It would be cool if we took our skateboards and skated on the highway downhill but be haven't had any space for them. At least we made some photod in the middle of the road which was endless so we could see the cars approaching(maybe 1 truck every half an hour).

The South Dakota border sign. A lot of smoke everywhere that evening as you can see from the hazy photo.

It was turning dark so we stopped at a town called Hot Springs. We were looking for a bar to have a cold beer and some food. Suprisingly there was no one on the streets at nine in the evening so we couldn't ask anyone for a good bar. But there's the good old google that told us about three bars near us and only two were working, American Legion and another one that I can't recall the name right now. So we went to the "I forgot the name" one, they had pizza. And to be honest that pizza was so good probably the bost one I had in the US. We also met a cool guy at the bar. He was a butcher and he had a house with a huge garden so he was planting lots of different vegetables. He showed us his custom made motorcycle which was impressive. The bartender was a cool guy, not only he could make a good pizza he was mixing some good cocktails. He was from Denver but he moved there a year ago and opened that bar. To get back to the butcher guy, he was the first person in three years that knew exacly where I was from, he didn't just know Croatia as a country but he knew my street. That was fascinating. He was in the US military stationed in Croatia in the street next to mine where the secret service has their headquarters. At that time Croatia faught for independence in one of the Balkan wars. Can you imagine what the odds were to bump into a guy in a small town Called Hot Springs in South Dakota. That was 30 years ago that he was stationed in Croatia and still knows how my street and school looks like. I was mindblown that night.

After the bar we went to a place where we put up our tents to spend the night under the clear blue and stary sky. That was my first time ever camping and I need to say it was more comfortable sleeping on the ground than in my bed back in Breck. If I knew that, I would probably, a long time ago, trash my bed and get the thin mattres that came with the camping gear.

Next day we went to the Badlands which also my roommate recommended beacuse of it's wildlife and the landscape of a moon or as he was telling me that it looks like one of the "Star Wars" planets. On the way there we stopped at Walldrug. I mean there were about at least 1000 signs on the way there that said "5 cents coffee and free ice cold water - Walldrug". How can't you not stop there. They bag you to stop. Cool place! You should stop by to see it for half an hour. Ther'es a bunch of thing there. I dressed up for the first time like a cowboy and took a photo, a lady was chasing me to erase the photo because no one is allowed to take a photo with a cowboy hat. That was pretty weird.

Then we saw a little Mt. Rushomre and a huge jackalope.

We had fun playing some arcade games and of course we had a 5 cent coffee and free ice cold water. We had so much fun fooling around that Walldrug place.

So we got to Badlands and first thing a goat jumps in front of our car and it won't move so I got out and run towards it, eventually it moved. Then we saw a million prairie dogs and a badger killing a one of them. Poor preirie dog it was a brutal scene from the nature. Steph told us that badgers are dangerous. Also it's the state animal of Wisconsin, but she has never seen one back at home. So she was pretty happy about that even though the scene was pretty meesed up.

When we came to the camping spot we walked up the hill next to us to see the beautiful sunset. All of the cars parked at the camping spot were parked in a circle, it looked just like a caravan from the time of cowboys and indians. On the hill we met some people. One of them was a guy from NYC and went after a buffalo to take a photo. He came pretty close, I mean too close when I think about that now. The buffalo could easy run him over. There was also some cool guy from Canada with his wife and two sons. They were living in a huge camper travelling around the continent and teaching the kids about different stuff. They had home schooling . Never heard about home schooling like that. At first I was amazed like how can they take the kids out of school and just travel around. Pretty cool, can't really tell if it's a good or a bad thing. We had different point of views when we had a little debate about that idea.

It was a pretty hot day and a freezing night. The wind was so strong it almoust blew my tent away and I didn't sleep that well but it was totally woth it. I mean the landscape was so unique and the wild life really special. Definitely a place to go to. Next thing in the morning we had breakfast and packed our tents beacuse we wanted to walk around the "Star Wars" landscape as my roommate likes to call it.

We took off and had a pretty long drive to Mt. Rushmore. It was really foggy because the wild fires surrounding us. So we actually had a little bit of luck seeing the Badlands vast landscape. As we got to Mt. Rushmore it was midday and the Sun was pretty high, it was hot and a bunch of people everywhere walking and then all the people hiding in the shade of trees while waiting for other family members to see the memorial. When you walk up to the place where you can see the heads there were flags from all the states hanging with the year they've united. So I learned that Long Island was also a state. I taught it was part of New York, sorry guys I hope no one gets offended who from Long Island is. As we were approaching the heads they were poping out more and more. When I finally saw the monumental sight I was so happy that I finally got there so I took like 50 videos and sent them to my parents, sister and my friends. But most of all I was happy because I was standing there with two of my good friends that took me on this road trip with them.

Also we saw this guy next to the heads.

Well these were most of the places I saw on this roadtrip to South Dakota, now I ask you was it worth taking a week off and travel to all of these amazing places, expanding my horizons. Having fun with friends and meeting people from different sides of the country?