THE END

Day 30: We have entered the Golden State again, and are heading back to unpack the car and return to school. We will both miss our road trip a lot. We have seen so much of the country and learned so much about the diverse landscapes, cultures, and history of the locations through which we drove. We also realized how little of the country we really did see. You can see the map that highlights our route and the places where we stopped. A narrow line around the country can only cover so much. And of the 1000+ pages of our tour book, we might have only read through about 100. That leaves more room for adventure! -Eran and Sarah

Salt Lake City, UT

Here we are in Salt Lake City, Utah. The main attraction in the city center is the Mormon temple square, which we toured around the evening we arrived. The large building below is the main temple (we couldn't go inside, but saw a model of the structure and its rooms inside the visitor's center). In the other picture, Eran is standing inside the Salt Lake Tabernacle, which is a big egg-shaped structure where concerts and meetings are held. The other photo is us next to Salt Lake.

Grand Tetons

Here we are trying to do a jumping pose in Wyoming at the Grand Tetons (the mountains behind us). It didn't quite work out as planned, but it is still an interesting picture.

Mud Pots, Hot Springs, Steam Vents, and Geysers

Yellowstone is centered on a active supervolcano which last erupted over 600 thousand years ago. But due to its activity, there are many underground cavities in which water is heated and pushed to the surface. This can lead to four different types of observable phenomena, all of which we saw during our stay in the park. The top picture is of Sarah sniffing the sulfur-rich mud pot. The next one down shows the two of us in front of a hot spring, colored by minerals which are brought up with the water. Next one down is me getting heated up by a steam vent. And, on the bottom you can see Sarah with the most famous geyser in the world: Old Faithful, which erupted right on schedule at 2:54.

Why did the Bison Cross the Road?

The once endangered North American Bison were saved from extinction and reintroduced into the wild in Yellowstone. They have repopulated very successfully, and now have a very strong presence in the park. We ran into a large herd of them about an hour into our drive on the "Grand Loop." They were munching on the grasses by the road, and some of them ventured onto the pavement. These had no fear of humans, and did not respond to the car horns. In the video you can see how close they got to us. Shortly after this video was taken one even scraped up against the back of our car as he crossed the road.

Mt. Rushmore

It is true, the faces of four famous presidents really are carved into the side of a mountain in South Dakota.

Wall Drug, South Dakota

All during our drive through west Minnesota and the entire state of South Dakota, we saw advertisement signs every few miles or so for a place called "Wall Drug," located near Mount Rushmore in western South Dakota. You can see some of these in our collage of them. This represents only a fraction of the signs that we saw during our eight-hour drive.

Since we had nothing else to do, we thought, "Hey, why not! Let's go to this 'Wall Drug' place." It is basically an old-west style drug store which now consists of several buildings selling mostly tourist items, home-cooked meals, and a few actual drug store items. It also has a courtyard with various games and other entertainment. You can see us in the courtyard, me on a jackalope and Eran on an old settler's wagon.