Journey's End

I have just been on possibly one of the best family vacations ever.  Ever.

We got in a car on Wed, and we started driving.  We went through Wyoming and into South Dakota, where we stayed for two nights.  Then we went into Nebraska and stayed for a night until finally returning home today.

It was amazing.  I saw more antelope than I knew lived in the west.  I fell in love with the sculpted desert of Wyoming, the wind and the dust and the sky reaching endlessly into white blue nothingness.  I saw most of the night constellations in the middle of South Dakota, including the ones that the city block out.  I stared up Devil's Tower, admired the lines from the rocks that fall in sheets down the sides.  I walked and met every president of the U.S. (at least their statue forms), and glanced upon the giant faces of Mount Rushmore.  I walked where pioneers once tread, I saw the wildness of the land, and I fought off mobs of grasshoppers and wasps.  I tried buffalo sausage and huckleberries and fresh made blackberry jam, too.  What's a trip without new food?

And I did it all with my family.  We laughed and joked and wondered together about things.  We slept in, ate meals, and just enjoyed each other's company in a way we haven't been able to do as much now that my sister and I are older.  And not once did we drive each other up a wall.

But all good journeys must come to an end, and this one was no exception.  It's fun to see new things, to try new things, to feel new things.  I am happy to be home, though.  Sleeping in my own bed is going to be wonderful tonight.

Thank you for indulging me, family and readers.  I hope you too one day get to experience the wilderness of the west.

~Meaghan