*Warning. Longest Post Ever. Proceed with Caution*
Okay. I know I’m going back in time here. My summer had been so busy and consumed by Kyle :) But I have to blog about the trip that I took back in May.
Before I get into the awesomeness, let me gush a little bit about my best friend.
This is Stephanie.
She’s my sister-in-law but really she’s my sister. She is amazing. Her and I became best friends right away after she married my big brother. Our daughters are best friends. She is such a good listener. I don’t think there is one secret that I’ve kept from Stephanie. She’s the first person to know anything –She was the first person I told when I was pregnant with Leah. She’s the first person to know that Kyle and I were planning on getting married, even before there was a ring on my finger. She just genuinely cares. So to add to her awesomeness, she was the first person to read my book - the 400 page novel that took me three years to write, remember? And she agreed to come with me on this trip to South Dakota to go experience and research the location where my book takes place. She got in a car with me for twelves hours to drive around Custer State park and look at rocks! - rocks- (I’ll explain my fascination with the rocks) all the while I was obsessing and talking about my book (and Kyle) And she was totally interested. She pulled over and pointed out places where certain events might have happened in my books- “Look, Tahsha, that looks like uncle Shawn’s ranch.” “That looks like a place where Shea would go rock climbing.” And, the whole way home, she helped me outline my entire next novel.
Can I just say that I have THE BEST sister in the whole wide world?
Okay. Thanks for allowing me to gush.
Onto the trip.
So, this trip was a totally “bucket list,” “live your life” “wild mountain skies” kind of trip. I thought about going to the Black Hills of South Dakota for years now, but never did it. I’m sure everyone has those things that they would love to do, but never get around to because of life or whatever. So, after a while of dealing with Brad’s death, and being completely inspired by the way he lives his life, I decided - what the heck. I don’t have one good reason NOT to go to the Black Hills. So I decided that I was going. No matter what. No matter if I went alone. I would just plan it and GO. Luckily, Stephanie is amazing (as I’ve already mentioned) and wanted to come with me. So we planned a girls trip tot he Black Hills to go rock climbing. How freaking cool is that?
Let me give you a little info about my book. Shea Chapman is a sixteen year old girl who goes to live in the Black Hills of South Dakota, when she discovers Kalem, a mysterious indian guarding the sacred Warrior Spires, she knows something is going on in these lands. She never expects to discover a lost Native American tribe or to find out that they believe that she is sent there to save them.
The drive there was long, made easier by our lengthly talks, country music and trips down memory lane to listening to high school music. :)
We got to Custer late at night, almost couldn’t find our hotel, and crashed.
The next day, we were ready for a full day of sight seeing and woke up to rainy, hazy, foggy BLAH.
We made the best of it anyway and prayed that the weather would clear up for our rock climbing trip that we has scheduled for the next day.
I was worried that this day would be a disappointment because of the weather, but it turned out to be amazing. We spent about nine hours driving through Custer State Park and the Needles Highway. Because of the weather and the fact that it was a weekday, there was NO ONE else on the highway. I felt like we were there all by ourselves.
(Some of our animal friends we saw along the way)
(This is just how I imagnied the ranch where Shea lives with her Uncle Shawn.)
We saw some other amazing things on this drive. I LOVED the rocks. The needles are all over Custer State Park. In my book, Shea rock climbs with a group of native american kids from a nearby reservation. So every time we would see a rock formation, I’d have to pull over and photograph it. Stephanie kept making fun of me (Seriously guys, I was so IDIOTIC about the rocks!!!) They are just so beautiful. I really felt like I was emerged in my book. Which was a good thing because I’d never been here before so I was happy to see that I wan’t too far off when I wrote it.
Eventually, my enthusiasm for rocks wore off on Steph!
The road narrowed and we pulled around this little bend and stopped right into this:
I didn’t know what we’d done. We were following our GPS exactly - how did we end up in a dead end? The giant spires loomed all around us, like they’d closed in on each other blocking our way. We slowly drove into this little circles and found this:
A tiny tunnel that lead through the rocks. So at least we knew that we hadn't actually transported into my book (hehe *nerd alert*)
We stopped the car and got out and Stephanie finally joined in my craziness about the rocks. It was the most surreal feeling being in the middle of this ring of spires. ALL ALONE!!! No one was there. We yelled and whopped and danced around and climbed all over for probably thirty minutes. I tell you-- there is a feeling there! It’s probably magnified by my complete obsession with this area for the past few years. BUT I totally know why the ancient Native Americans considered this land sacred and why there are so many legends and mythical stories associated with this land. There is something different there.
*We came back here two days later and the place was packed with people- you could hardly find a place to park. Stephanie and I marveled at how awesome it was to get to be there by ourselves the first time. What a cool experience and feeling that was. That feeling was totally gone when we were surrounded by a ton of people.*
Then, if I thought that that was amazing, I had no idea what I was going to experience right after. We drove through the little tunnel, and wound down the hill side (stopping to take a picture of the silhouetted mountains off in the distance *steph is a nerd about silhouettes like I’m a nerd about rocks) Then we turned a corner and faced these:
Cathedral Spires. This is what I had come for. This is what I’d drove twelve hours for. My book had a “sacred land” dominated by these spires (I renamed them Warrior Spires) I’d been thinking, writing and studying about these formations for three years.
I was so excited. We stopped and got out and I was completely giddy. I mean- retarded excited. I couldn’t believe that I finally was seeing them!! Again, there we were ALL ALONE!!! Seriously, I can’t describe the feeling we had by being there alone. We got out and I went crazy! I was near tears. Stephanie grabbed my camera and filmed my freak out. Normally, I’d save myself the embarrassment and hide the pictures from the world, but I want you to see how excited I was.
Even Steph was in love!
Of course we had to get some good jumping pictures in.
My life felt complete at that moment.
We continued our drive through Custer State park and ended at Mt. Rushmore. We really had fun walking down on the Presidential trail, and learning about how they made the sculpture. Can I say it again, I LOVED being there with Stephanie.
That night, we were freezing cold and VERY tired. (Steph more then me. She drove the entire day so I could be a dork and take pictures of rocks out the window - did I mention that she loves me?) We ate our microwaved meals (we were spending a ton of money on gas-- we drove 12 hours so we could drive around all day) and our delicious pie from the purple pie place and rented Pearl Harbor. I’m not sure why, but we got talking about that movie on the drive and we really wanted to see it. (I think we were mostly talking about Josh Heartnet and how we used to have high school crushes on him - he was one of many posters that graced my walls growing up.) But then we quickly remembered that that movie is super depressing and they all die and the Japanese won’t stop shooting. It gave me anxiety.
We were scheduled to do a rock climbing tour the next day, but because of the weather, we decided to push it back one more day and try our luck.
The weather sucked even worse that day.
So we went to Crazy Horse Memorial, which the idea is really cool when they finally finish it. We were just excited to be indoors where it was warm and dry. (Really - most of the time the high temp. was in the 30s)
Then we went on a tour of Jewel Cave. The whole land here is pockmarked by these cave systems. In my second book, Shea spends a lot of time in these caves so I really wanted to go experience it. No pictures do it justice though. It was really interesting to learn about caving and what they have to do to train for some of the expeditions that they are still doing here. I love caves. Kinda goes hand in hand with my weird love for rocks.
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