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The sun starts to set, dimming the enormous sky. The highway brings us into a town, but there’s no hotel that we can see. Then we’re past it, on to the next town. I flip the headlights on. Tall grass and small, rolling hills spread out on either side. Little roads branch off and seem to lead to nowhere. I pull off on to one of them.
Scott looks up from the map. “What’re you doing?”
I answer him by pulling over and turning off the car. Outside, everything is still. The daylight is nearly gone, but enough remains for me to make my way down a little bank to a dried up river bed. There’s a smooth, level spot that would be perfect for our sleeping bags.
I smile. “Let’s spend the night here, under the stars.”
“There’s rattlesnakes here! I’m not sleeping on the ground.”
“Well, let’s put up the tent, then.”
He looks around. “I don’t think we’re supposed to.”
“Says who? Nobody’s around! Come on.”
So we pull out our tent, our sleeping bags and pillows, and our cooler that has nothing in it but cheese and beer. At least we have crackers to go with the cheese.
The stars appear, one by one, surrounding the three-quarter moon with flickering light. It’s like we’re in a planetarium, the gigantic sky surrounding us.
“See?” I say, as we sit together, my Mexican blanket over our shoulders and our arms around each other’s waists as we watch for falling stars. “Isn’t this better than a hotel?”
“Doesn’t even compare.”
We fall asleep in our tent, small and alone under the sky, with the wide, empty land stretched out around us. In the morning, I shake Scott awake. The temperature dropped overnight, and I’m shivering in my sleeping bag.
“Let’s get going,” I say. “Let’s try to find coffee somewhere.”
Scott drives, and as he pulls out of the little dirt road I followed in last night, we pass a “No Trespassing” sign. Scott looks at me and sighs.
“I didn’t see that last night!” I say.
He doesn’t say anything, but he smiles.
It takes almost an hour for us to find a gas station. I bring my toiletry bag into the washroom to brush my teeth in the grimy sink, and then I go find the coffee pot. They only have styrofoam cups and little packets of powdered creamer, but I pour three cups anyway. Scott’s waiting at the counter.
“Who’s the third one for?” he asks.
“I want two.”
He pays for the gas, coffee, and donuts, and pulls out the map in the car. “Let’s take the interstate into the Black Hills,” he says. “I’m not in the mood to take these slow back roads today.”
We hit the Black Hills around noon. The interstate takes us past Rapid City and up to the turnoff, and then we follow tour busses down the narrow road that winds through hills covered in dark green trees. When we reach Deadwood, we're ready for lunch. We pay five dollars to park in a ramp and walk the main street in search of a place to eat. The restaurants all look the same, swarming with people taking pictures. We settle on a place at the far end of the main drag, its front made out of aged wood and the inside a replica of an old saloon. One side opens up to a room filled with slot machines, like all the other places in town.
“What do you want to do in the Black Hills, exactly?” Scott asks after the waitress takes our order.
“I don’t know. Just check it out, I guess.”
“It’ll take us all day to go through. Is there something specific you want to do here, or do you just want to drive through?”
I shrug. The tree-covered hills don’t seem as interesting now as I thought they’d be. “I suppose we should see Mount Rushmore.”
“It’s just going to be a big tourist trap.”
“Don’t you want to at least see it?”
“To tell you the truth,” he says, “I don’t really have much interest in it. It’s just some presidents’ heads carved into a hill.”
I laugh. “I guess you’re right.”
“Besides, I sort of want to figure out where we’re going. All the people here are tourists. They’re here on vacation. They have money to burn. To be honest, we don’t really have the money to be spending in tourist restaurants. We need our money for rent and groceries.”
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