I recently returned from a 10-day “vacation” in which I traveled back home to the Western side of South Dakota. The trip was mostly exhausting because I drove the 2100 mile roundtrip and never spent more than 1 night in the same town since I wanted to see so many people along the way in Minneapolis, St. Cloud, Fargo-Moorhead, Bismarck, etc. Despite all of the traveling and the physical exhaustion, it was a complete mental respite.

I love living in Milwaukee but the hustle and bustle of a city wears me down. There are so many opportunities here but the constant traffic, noise, parking and other fallbacks to city-life can be overwhelming to a kid who grew up wearing Wranglers, pitching horse crap and lived 100 miles from the nearest stoplight. For that reason, the nothingness of the Western Dakotas was a welcome and wonderful sight and sound (or lack thereof).

There are so many reasons why it was great and I will only list a few:

• At least 3 times I drove 30 miles without meeting one other car.
• One of the nights I stayed at my grandpa and grandma’s house where they don’t have many modern amenities including a microwave, coffee-maker (they boil water the old-fashioned way), only recently had to get a color TV to watch the 5 o’clock news because the old set broke and their phone is the old rotary style.
• The bars charge $2 for a full-priced bottle of Bud Light.
• My parents recently moved to town and bought a 3-bedroom/2-bathroom home with a 4-car garage and separate living quarters on 3 acres of land 2 blocks from the school for only $50,000 (what would that sell for here?).
• When you’re driving, the driver of a car that you’re meeting always waves; whether you know them or not.
• Half the time you do know them
• An oil-change, oil filter, air filter, lube, inspection, vacuum, window wash, dash dusting cost me $17.75.
• If you want to hear absolutely nothing at all, 90% of the time you simply have to shut your own mouth.