Day One Rapid City, South Dakota

. . .and we’re off!! 

We left the theatre around 8 o’clock and started our 7 hour journey west. Whenever people ask me what I’m doing and where I’m going,  I always respond “I’m going on a caravan to Wyoming”. It makes me feel like we should be traveling in a covered wagon pulled by oxen. Have no fear, we are, in fact, in a motorized vehicle. We started out the trip by reading all of the thank you notes we got from the kindergarteners at Spalding Park Elementary school. Can you say adorable? The car ride consisted largely of sleeping. There were the occasional conversations between Bronny and Abbie, but not me! I just like to sleep. We drove straight through to Rapid City, only stopping twice for Mrs. Wooley and I to excrete our waste products. The other two girls were incredibly proud of how long they could hold it. Once we got to Rapid City we stopped at Sam and Louie’s New York pizza! This was an ideal place to stop for a couple different reasons. 1. We hadn’t eaten all day. 2. Abbie is a picky eater and one of the few foods she does enjoy is pizza. 3. Bronny can get a vegetarian pizza. And 4. They  have gluten free pizza. If you’ve followed blogs from last year I’m sure you know that I eat ALL THE TIME. So while everyone else ordered a single slice of pizza and a salad I devoured an entire pepperoni pizza all by myself. We played in the arcade for a while and then went to check into the hotel. We had about 45 minutes to relax before we needed to head off to the Historic Elks Theatre and set up before the show! When we got there we unloaded the van in the alley and Mrs. Wooley went to park it by Jimmy Carter. The Historic Elks Theatre was an interesting place to perform. It’s a movie theatre and live theatre all wrapped into one! They had a stage and curtains, and behind the curtains is the projection screen for movies! The fact that it’s built for movies just meant more work on our part to make sure we were heard by everyone in the audience. We had three hours to set up and rehearse, but I only thought we had two, so I got a little panicky. Finally 7 o’clock rolled around and our first performance on the road began! Wow. They absolutely loved it! The parents loved it just about as much as the kids! The audience’s responses were just further proof to us that butts are indeed funny. They always got really excited when there was audience participation and everyone wanted to be a part of it! We performed for about 580 people. That, sir, is amazing! After the show we were signing autographs and this boy came up to me and asked whether the dragon was fire breathing or komodo. I told him it was both and that it still really scary, to which he replied “Well I’m a boy so it doesn’t scare me” I told him I was a boy too and he just laughed at me. We got packed up in 20 minutes and headed off to find a Walmart. The GPS told us there was one only a couple blocks away. . . there wasn’t. Finally we found one and got things for dinner. Unfortunately we forgot the one thing we actually went in for, cough drops. We got back to the hotel, showered, ate, and went to bed. We were woken up around 1 o’clock because the alarm clock in our room started blaring loud, obnoxious music. When I wake up in the middle of the night I’m not a happy camper, so I yanked that dang alarm clock right from the wall, and it was never to be heard from again.

Ready to Go in Rapid City

Until Next Time!

Grace