Deadwood, Devil's Tower & Close Encounters

Day 10:
Double digits!!! Today was one historic day. First thing in the morning we visited the alive town of Deadwood, which characters from the past, such as Wild Bill Hickok are memorialized and are great tourist attractions. Today they had a parade of different figures and other interesting things... too bad we missed it by about five minutes, which was a real shame because it sounded really cool.
Our next stop was to the very tall Devil's Tower, which is a famous spot for close encounters of the unknown, used in the movie "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind," and a perfect spot for sunbathing prarie dogs. It's also the very first national monument. Native Americans used to believe that seven girls were chased by a bear, so they jumped on a stone and prayed to the gods to save them... and suddenly the stone skyrocketed into the sky and the girls were reincarnated into stars. But truly the tower was once an active volcano, but its top is sealed and the very top of the tower has its own ecosystem of extraordinary animals. Records have it that a handful of people ascended the tower, but today many climbers can go up and reach the top as well. However, there was probably many Native Americans who climbed the tower before there was a form of records.
We are settled in Cody, WY and plan to visit Yellowstone national park, accomplishing the first fourth of our trip, and then heading to the south to states such as Arizona. Big day tomorrow, better get some rest.

Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse & Crazy Cows

Day 9:
Where do I start? Today was one heck of a day! We started the day by stopping at a western town called Wall in South Dakota that is famous for a store called Wall Drug. It became popular by the free ice water campaign to settlers during the Westward Expansion. Next was the Badlands National Park. It was a crazy expirience being at such a high altitude and the layers of rock were gorgeous colors varying from purple to gold. We happened to make a huge detour along a unpaved dirt road where we were attacked by kamakazi grasshoppers getting stuck in the car grill to cows on the road that wouldn't move. Next was our goal to hit: Mount Rushmore. It was so big and up close the pictures we took almost look like you could climb up the chiseled granite and touch the former presidents on the rock. We took a nice nature trail where we learned about the sculptor and how each president got his face on the mountain. Lastly we visited the renown Crazy Horse memorial, which is similar to Mt. Rushmore but much much bigger. It is an unfinished model of the Native American Crazy Horse, which is planned to be a full-scale 3D model of him pointing to his lands of Black Hills, which was foretold where life was created and where life shall end in those hills. There was a special laser light show tonight projected on the mountain of how it became a project to remember the cultural values of the Lakota tribe. We plan to go to Deadwood tomorrow and venture into Wyoming, which from there we will make our way south to Arizona and such. Until tomorrow my friends.

Welcome to Murdo, SD

Day 8:
Today marks the first week of our journey! I've read some emails about the consistency of the posts of the blog, but the last couple of days have been parts of the surprise I've been talking about... But lets move on. Today we headed out of Iowa/Nebraska and drove into South Dakota. The town we are currently in is called Murdo, it's a wild west town from the early 20th century. It is just like the wild west but with a touch of modern buildings and technology. For our first day in SD, things were kind of strange. Along I-29, we saw these giant bull heads and tee-pees along the highway. I even saw my first hitch-hikers going to Sioux city, not that it's a contest or some kind of honor to see these guys, but you just never see them in the east coast. Day 7 was an easy day, I got this cool Ozzy Osbourne Tee shirt from Spencer's. We arrived in Murdo around 9:30 and went to a Cowboy bar for dinner... Yee Ha! We plan to go to Deadwood and Mt. Rushmore tomorrow and stay in South Dakota for another night. 8 states in 8 days, good progress so far...

Day 6:

Day 6 is a surprise!! I will reveal the secret once the final day of our trip has been recorded.

We LOVE Omaha!!!!!

Day 5:

Last night we drove over the Missouri River to have dinner in the Old Market section of Omaha. It was great with cobblestone streets and great restaurants. It looked a lot like Greenwich Village. Turns out that since yesterday we have loved Omaha so much that we decided to stay another day! But this day we spent more times between states of Iowa & Nebraska because of my mom's lack of attention towards the GPS, or Roz as we call her so we went over the Missouri River that separates the two states about 6 times. We went to the local zoo, which absolutely thrilled me! The zookeepers do not bar up the animals, but instead let them roam around and in fact we saw one peacock go up to the snack line! It was too hot in Omaha so we spent the rest of the day in the cool hotel air conditioning and plan to conquer Rushmore tomorrow.

The Bridges of Madison County

Day 4:

The last day in Iowa was an extordinary one. The tempature was getting hotter, but still a day for adventure. We drove out of Iowa City and as we came across the I-80 to Council Bluffs, Iowa, we stopped to see the Covered Bridges as shown in the book, "The Bridges of Madison County." Plus, we visited the 7 Amana colonies, which there were many exquisite antique shops, but the majority of attractions were closed due to it being Sunday. S.O.L. But the original home of the actor John Wayne was pretty cool! We are now situated exactly along the border of Iowa and Nebraska on the Missouri River (right out our hotel window!) and plan to visit Mt. Rushmore and complete 1/4 of our road trip.

Iowa

Day 3:
Today our next stop was Iowa. It was hard to leave Michigan but if we didn't leave then, then we would not have gotten to the renown Marriott at about 7:00. We crossed the Mississippi. Ha ha! we're in a new time zone so we get to stay up later than usual!! The Iowa river was beautiful and we had passed the World's Biggest Truck Stop!!! There was a plane that raced right besides us and we almost crashed a wedding in one of the best restaurant that was once a power plant in the 17th century! Tomorrow we will go to the Amana colonies and ease our way into Nebraska. Enjoying the time difference. Cya later east coasters!

Friday July 23 Day 2:
Today we had still encountered severe weather, the power almost went out. Besides that though, we had a pretty good day. The annual Ann Arbor Art Festival was in town for the rest of the week, we decided to go and see what the buzz was about. It was very sunny and hot out, but scattered showers in the afternoon. We visited the Law Quad and the campus of the University of Michigan, plus the best ice cream shop you could ever imagine! Better than those pricey NYC cones. We plan to head for Chicago tomorrow and possibly see a Cubs game. Can't wait!!!

Day 1:
We have finally got the car fixed up and we left just as the sun was rising. Our first stop in Pennsylvania was a small settlement, or Belafonte- or "Beautiful Fountain" in Italian. A couple hours later we finally hit the state of Ohio. We found it to be quite flat, for us mountain folk, just kidding. As we neared Michigan, our first stop, we encountered a critical lightning storm, which soon turned into a tornado storm. We finally made it into Ann Arbor, where we met up with one of the closest friends we know, practically family. We spent the rest of the night in his company and can't wait until tomorrow. Much for a first day of traveling, isn't it?

Got car part today & probably will take a few hours to fix. Probably won't be on the road tomorrow. Hopefully early start Friday to cover 9 hour trip to Ann Arbor

Day 1: (or 0)

As we headed out to our great adventure, all of a sudden my dad loses the power to steer and unfortunately our trusty BMW broke down. It took about an hour for the tow truck to arrive while we prayed our trust-worthy and close friends would save us. As my parents were talking about what happened, they happened to show up and brought us back home. We were thankful this event happened as we started rather than breaking down in Michigan. We will most likely not be on the road until Thursday, July 22nd 2010. Will blog as that date comes.

Signing off,

Aidan R.

For the summer of 2010, me and my family have decided to go on a cross-country car trip, starting from Milford, Pennsylvania and ending in Wyoming, and going in a circle back to Milford. Instead of camp, this was the substitute. Thus appropriately calling this blog: "Camp Road Trip." We plan to stop along the way to go see close friends, or visit cool locations such as: The Four Corners, The Badlands, and many museums and national parks. We plan to start this trip July 20, 2010. If the trip goes well (it probably will) we will plan to repeat this trip, but among many other countries such as Italy and France. We hope you will follow this log of events everyday and hope for you to stick with us for the next month!

Enjoy!!!!
The Rubenstein Famliy