George, Tom, Ted , Abe and the others

Since we didn't have time yesterday to go to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, we stopped there this morning before heading out of town. It was worth the time. He was a pretty interesting guy and the museum has lots of artifacts from his life as well as tons of pictures and facts about the "Wild West" show that he was so famous for. It was definitely very cool.

We left Cody and began driving, heading towards South Dakota. Again, we were on secondary roads and again, it was awe inspiring scenery. We drove through Bighorn National Forest; very winding roads that wrapped around the Bighorn Mountain range. It was tense driving (and tense passenger-ing), but in the end, another totally worthwhile experience. We drove through the town of Sundance, Wyoming (where the Kid got his name) and stopped for lunch in the town of Buffalo.

We finally crossed the state line into South Dakota and we were excited to be close to seeing Mount Rushmore. Although we had hotel reservations for the night in the town of Rapid City, we decided to switch to the town of Keystone, which is much closer to where the monument is. We had driven over 425 miles and were anxious to get out of the car for the day and not have to drive again. Now, I don't know what the hell fantasy land I was living in, but I thought that Mount Rushmore was in the middle of some beautiful wilderness and you could drive up to it and bingo, there it would be. Wrong, wrong, wrong!! It is part of the most honky tonk resort area ever, that makes the Wildwood boardwalk look like the Champs Elysee. Possibly the most white trashy place I have ever seen. The monument itself is quite extraordinary and worth seeing. However, how or, more interestingly, why, anyone would think of undertaking such a project, is completely beyond me. I think the guy was on some serious drugs. He was probably pretty stoned when the thought occurred to him," hey, wouldn't it be cool to carve 4 presidents heads into the side of a mountain?" I mean, for real!

Ok, onto to the motel. We are back to the Bates Motel, except this one is even worse than the first night. We get here, we're tired and grumpy, Luigi has puked in the back of the car and we're all freaking out a little. We check in and they tell us that we have gotten the last room that is "pet friendly", ok, that's good. We go to the 2nd floor, which is ungodly hot and humid because the pool is right below us and the smell of chlorine is kind of overpowering, but I'm still hopeful. I have the key and the dogs and I open the door to room 206, and there is a large Mexican family with their little dog already staying in the room!!! They are all sleeping and their little dog becomes hysterical when it sees Sonny and Luigi and the boys, of course, attack it. Meanwhile, I am standing there, not really knowing what to do, thinking that this is some sort of a joke and Guy is right behind me with the bags and then, the family wakes up. They look at me and aren't nearly as freaked as I am, they just sort of look confused. I say OMG, sorry sorry and I run out of the room dragging the dogs with me and tell Guy, who hasn't walked in yet, about the people in the room. I am absolutely serious, I really opened the door to a room that was already occupied, by a lot of people and a dog. Poor Guy has finally had it by this point and he throws the bags down and goes back to the front desk. The dogs and I wait by the bags, which are next to the door of the room I just walked into. They give us another room, "pet friendly" be damned and barely apologize for their ridiculous mistake. I'm pretty sure they didn't apologize to the people I walked in on either. Seriously, can you imagine? After I stopped being insane about it, we peed ourselves laughing.

This place is pretty bad and I doubt there will be any sleeping for me tonight, although I never discount the power of my little magic pink pills. As I am writing this, I am sitting in the bathroom, in my pajamas and with my shoes on, and Guy is sound asleep in the other room. I don't know how the hell he does it. He is used to the same wonderful, clean and nice smelling living conditions as I am, yet, he can put his head down on any gross pillow and actually cover himself with the gross sheets and be snoring in 2 minutes. It drives me nuts.

In the words of my favorite bitch, "tomorrow is another day."