Wisconsin Trip Recap Part 2: Days 3 and 4, with an appearance by The Young Buck in 2020 Vision

I figure if I write an entry in the morning and another one at night I’ll be relatively caught up on my trip entries in no time. I really want to write them while my memory is still relatively fresh. My memory has a habit to forget things. My sister will bring up memories from when we were kids, and I’ll be like “ohhh I forgot all about that…”and that happened more than once during this past trip.

Day 3: Thursday, August 6th
Thursday morning, my dog and I woke up at our hotel in Great Falls, Montana ready to start our second leg of the road trip to Wisconsin. When I road trip, I never book hotel reservations in advance. I like to see how far I can get before I need to crash for the day/night. So when we left Great Falls, I wasn’t sure where our next stop would be or if we would just drive until we reached Wisconsin. Before leaving Great Falls, we stopped at a park along the Missouri River to take in a bit of sight seeing of the river. One thing I wanted to commit to doing any time I made a hotel stop was to do a bit of sightseeing in the city of the hotel. There was a nice riverfront park near our hotel, so we did a little bit of a sunrise walk along it before leaving

The Missouri River (at least the part I saw) is a pretty clean, wide river.

After our morning walk, we set sail for our next destination: Badlands National Park. I put the destination in Google Maps on my phone and left. I knew once I got on I-90 it would take me right there, but OF COURSE I didn’t preview the route beforehand, and when it told me I would save 35 minutes to take this other way, I let it auto switch to the new and improved route. Y’ALL. This route diverted me off I-90 to do a roughly 135 mile stretch through the back country without cell service once again. This time I drove through not one, but two tribal reservations in Montana: Crow and North Cheyenne reservations. Of course I wasn’t allowed to stop in either for any services due to them being under strict stay at home orders and luckily this time I didn’t have to. But given my situation and anxiety from the day before, I was pretty over Google Maps at that point. I couldn’t wait to get back on I-90. Once I got through that unusual route through the middle nowhere, I eventually got to South Dakota and entered Badlands National Park around 4:30pm. Its so crazy to me that this national park is within a day’s drive from where I grew up, yet I never had been there. At 4:30pm on a Thursday, the park was HOT, windy and not very full.

I was still pretty wide awake after I left the park even though we had put in a full day of driving and sightseeing, so I put my mom’s address into Google Maps and decided to just keep driving and see where we got. My mom’s GPS said if I kept driving, I’d arrive Friday morning around 3:30 am. Before I knew it, I decided I’d just go for it.

Day 4: Friday, August 7th.
Thursday night I texted my mom that I would probably be showing up between 4:30 am-4:45 am given time spent at gas stations/dog walking breaks. I was doing great on the overnight drive, but once I reached Minneapolis (about 2 hours from my mom’s house) I was beginning to crash and feel it. But I couldn’t justify getting a hotel at 2:00 in the morning when I was two hours away from free lodging. So, Kohen and I stopped at a rest stop, took a half our walk around the grounds surrounding the rest stop and woke back up. I also bought an energy drink from a vending machine inside the rest stop.

Back on the road, we eventually reached my mom’s/stepdad’s house a little after 4:45 in the morning, and I went straight to bed after brief “welcome home!” greetings. I slept in the first half of the day while my mom was at work, she didn’t take days off until the following week because I legit hadn’t planned on getting there until Saturday, not Friday morning.

BUTTTTTT, a little someone in the name of The Young Buck said he had booked hotel reservations Friday night and Saturday night nearby to see me, so I had motivation to get there.

Friday night I went to The Young Buck’s hotel, and it was weird! Not the hotel, but the ever continuously mixed signals from The Young Buck. I assumed that since he made such a long drive to see me, he was eager to spend the night with me and that his libido was as high as mine. When he met me outside and saw that I brought some of my overnight luggage with, he legit tilted his head and said “Are you staying here tonight?” I was thrown off and had to quickly recover. I told him I was thinking I would, but I’d leave if he wanted me to. He said I could stay. He begged me to move to Ohio with him, and he drove all the way up here to see me, yet seem surprised I’d want to spend the night with him? I brought boozy beverages, and he said he didn’t want to drink. Okay, cool, but different. He seemed very distant and not cuddly at all. Not at all what I was expecting from someone who had just driven 10.5 hours from Ohio just to see me. He gave me a general life update, which wasn’t a positive one. He hasn’t registered for classes at Ohio State yet and thought about killing himself after about 2 weeks in Ohio. Meanwhile I was trying to lighten things up, and at least have a fun night with him. My mom and stepdad knew he was coming. My mom is super desperate for me to find someone, its ridiculous. While she was at work, she texted me that “if he wants to cancel his hotel reservation and stay at our place, he can. You guys can sleep in my bed since its bigger than the twin you’re sleeping on.” I couldn’t believe she pimped out her bed to me and a dude she literally has NEVER MET or spoken to. Luckily, The Young Buck thanked her but declined her super awkward offer and kept his hotel reservation. Anywho, back at the hotel on Friday night. As I said, he seemed kind of distant, but eventually I was able to loosen him up some, and we had slightly horrible, passionless sex and then fell asleep. And that was Friday, my first day in Wisconsin.

Last updated August 20, 2020