A Bumpy Road Through Nowhere, South Dakota

A week and a half into my family's cross-country road trip we found ourselves surrounded by empty fields of grass in the center of South Dakota. 

All of us sat quietly in our 32-foot RV barreling down the highway. My dad driving forward staring at the seemingly endless road, mom fiddling with her phone, and me in the back gazing into the flat grass-covered distance.

My family had gone on road trips every two years or so and South Dakota was a through point in our journey to St. Louis. We had just left Badlands National Park and entered the great expanse of emptiness of the Midwest.

Breaking the silence, mom looked up and announced the reason she had been tapping on her phone for the last eternity. There was a shortcut that would cut down the drive by an hour. We all excitedly accepted this proposal.

Maybe it would be a change in scenery. Maybe it would lead to a new adventure. Maybe it would turn out to be a time-consuming and somewhat hilarious misadventure.

As we turned onto the shortcut nothing changed. Smooth black asphalt for miles. 

As we got further in, however, farms started to appear. Corn, wheat, potatoes … for miles upon miles across the flat, arid terrain. But as fast as the scenery changed, so did the road. From nice smooth asphalt to uneven dirt.

The RV began bouncing from pothole to pothole. Everything was tossed around inside the cabinets and drawers. Pans clanked, utensils jingled, bags of food ruffled, all against the cabinet doors. A drawer slid open, nearly breaking the runner.

My dad yelled over the cacophony of noise, “Tape that shut!” 

I ran into the back and shuffled through the now disheveled drawers for any kind of tape. After what felt like forever, I found it, glorious blue-tinged painter’s tape.

Running back to the front was a challenge, keeping my balance while not running into the drawers and cabinets falling open in front of me. I finally reached the front and knelt down directly facing a drawer. Right then a bump shook the entire vehicle, opening the drawer right into my face.

Finally able to push it closed and tape it shut was a victory that, in the moment, was incomparable to any others achieved on this trip.

I sat back down, buckled myself into the seat and endured the bumps.

For the next hour we withstood the constant noise and shaking caused by the road. All of us were at our wits end, but the most glorious sight revealed itself … cars.

Hundreds of cars driving perpendicular to us. Our salvation from this road had appeared before us. Overjoyed, dad sped up a little bit, only to remember what road we were on and promptly slowed again.

As we got closer we saw a new road splitting off from the current road but decided not to take it because we were so close to the highway.

Closer, closer, closer … we were almost there! Saved from the treachery of this road. 

A couple hundred feet ahead of us a tractor started crossing the road. As we got closer, he kept crossing over the road in alternating directions. 

We came to a complete stop. The farmer was tilling over the road, cutting off our exit.

Anger coursed through my dad, forced to do a ten-point turn on this road to head in the direction we had come from. While my dad fumed, mom and I laughed hysterically, and the farmer kept tilling his field over the road while staring at us.

We returned to the road that we had passed by earlier and quickly asphalt returned. It was smooth roads ahead. 

Laughing and wheezing, we looked at the time and it had taken longer than if we hadn't taken the shortcut at all.