Have you seen our tarp?/some bad lands

these are some bad...shut yo' mouth....but i'm talking about the badlands....oh, i can dig it. youve heard of tumble weeds, now picture tumble tarps. more specifically our tarp tumbling across the south dakota prairie. so our camping expedition got off to a, lets say, interesting start. after arriving at the badlands in gorgeous weather, we setup camp and proceeded to go off fishing whistling jolly go lucky tunes without a care in the world, laughing at how tame the badlands were and wondering how they could have gotten their name. upon returning, however, drew made an unnexpected sighting....our tent rolling across the prairie. we soon discovered why they we're called the badlands, as we wrestled down our tent, unsuccessfully chased our tarp out into the abist and mended the fractured tent pole with bent stakes and duct tape. we finally settled down under our severely collapsed tent, huddled up in our sleeping bags listening to the howling wind and drenching rain and observing the regular flickers of lightning pierce the night sky. these are some bad lands. 

to sum up the wind power, while cooking dinner i turned to eli to shout (he was 2 feet away) that he should be careful with his almost empty beer, in the process losing grip of my bread and watching it float into the darkness in search of our tarp. this was all while streaks was getting beans blown in his face and drew was trying to get a game of cards going. in the end we had a broken pole, torn rain fly, lost tarp (we think it took flight and is somewhere near rapid city by now), lost piece of toast, and a few bruised egos.

since that fateful night, we've been busy busy, and having a much smoother time. we hiked around the badlands, explored wall drug, caught loads and loads of perch, saw mt. rushmore, crazy horse, the wind caves, and sylvan lake. 

we're currently camping at sheridan lake in the black hills. very pretty, and we definately wont be taking the tree wind blocks for granted any more. its pasta tonight, big fire, and marshmellows. more updates tomorrow as we hit the road for wyoming.

see ya see ya,

M