South Dakota Chronicles, Day 1

My recent trip to South Dakota was more than amazing.  Here is part one of South Dakota Chronicles-

Day 1 was filled with travel.  In order to fly to Rapid City, we had to drive out to Vegas in the early morning.  We had enough time to visit the Healing Garden in honor of the 58 people who lost their lives at Route 91.  I cannot begin to describe the emotions that went through me.  I was thankful it was empty and I could stop and read each note, look at each picture and just feel the gratefulness I have to still be here.  Things could have been so different that night....

After the Healing Garden, we made our way to the South Point where we parked and took a Lyft to the airport, got checked in, ate and gambled.  Soon enough we were on the tarmac headed to our winter wonderland destination.  South Dakota is about a 2 hour flight.

Somehow the flight attendant thought it would be a marvelous idea to offer us doubles when we each ordered our vodkas.  Obviously we partook.  Have any of you ever been drunk at 38,000 feet?  It is weirdly fun.  Clearly I knew there would be a headache later, but at the moment I had the giggles and I am pretty sure every single person on that plane hated our group. #zerfucksgiven.

Once we landed, we grabbed our rental car and headed off to the Grand Rapid Hotel.  We love this hotel because of two things- there is a Perkins (Coco's of the Midwest) and a  karaoke bar named Cheers, where the people are friendly and the drinks are cheap.  We ate, drank and had a generally good time here.  It isn't a downtown bar, but it is friendly.

The only bad thing about Cheers is the fact that karaoke doesn't require the singer to sing happy songs.  Instead people chose the most depressing songs ever released to sing at the top of their lungs.  It was kind of a buzzkill.

At Cheers we met a bouncer.  I would share his name but there was a discrepancy in whether his name was Justin, Dustin or something entirely different.  Blame it on the booze.  He had been a Marine based out of  Camp Pendleton and was actually familiar with our mountains.  This is a strange occurrence if you are anywhere outside of the Inland Empire/ LA area of California.  

Bars in South Dakota close at 2 a.m., which was totally ok with us.  The Perkins is open 24 hours a day so we did what any group of drunks would do.... We went back to the Perkins for round two to try to sober up.  This was after we were pretty sure security was going to be called on us for being loud at 3 a.m..  Our impromptu jaunt to the Perks saved us the next morning, but more about that later...

Day 2 coming soon....