Chicago, IL

Weekend #7, 5 more to go! It's crazy to look at a map and see how far we've come. Sometimes I forget that it's not a normal way to spend the summer...and then I see people's reactions when we explain what we're doing and I remember!
Anywho....
I left off last time in Deadwood, SD (Rapid City weekend). Yes, Deadwood was fantastic- you can't go wrong with a live country concert with tons of locals crowding the streets of an old western town notorious for being the death-place of some crazy poker-playin' cowboy. Another plus was the rectory we hung out in all of Sunday day (Father's Day actually). It was a beautiful and very cozy place in back of St. Patrick's in Lead where we were invited to spend the day lounging on the couch watching TV and to cook and eat a nice dinner. Being there two churches close by, each with it's own rectory, and only one priest between the two, the rectory in Lead was unoccupied and Father offered for us to stay there for the night. The ladies slept out in the RV; we didn't stay inside because we enjoy sleeping in the loft, but more so because Mike was making creepy demonic sounds and pretending to be possessed, and basically he scared the cahoots out of us and made us afraid of the house. We hadn't need to travel far for daily mass that Monday morning because we were conveniently right next door to the parish. I was wiped out from the weekend and didn't feel the need to shower that morning or the night before. Crossroads has an unspoken spoken rule that mandates that any opportunity you get to shower- YOU TAKE IT AND YOU SHOWER. Well...we hadn't yet learned the genius behind this rule until this week. Not only did I not shower that morning, but I didn't shower the next, or the next, or the next. We were not happy campers this week (although I didn't mind not showering all that much...you get used to the grunge look living in VT ;-p just kidding...sort of). After hitting old Highway 31 (or some old highway...and I mean OLD highway), the chances of finding a nice RV park with showers were looking pretty bleak. It was a dirt road for, from what I remember, at least all of Monday. We saw wolf spiders and rattlesnakes along that route...just to give you a mental image of this highway. Scary!! We were literally in the middle of nowhere, so that night and the next we had to park the RV on the side of the road to sleep for the night. Usually we can at LEAST find a Walmart lot to park in, and in these cases we're just happy to have a bathroom close by so we don't complain! But yeah, side of the road on Old Highway 31 in BFE, South Dakota. BFE is what we say when we're literally in the middle of nowhere. And we were....in the middle of nowhere. Both nights turned out to be super stormy, so night shift had to sit out the lightning in the van while us poor squatters on day crew hugged our rosaries and prayed that a tornado didn't come and sweep us up into oblivion. We had NO cell reception, NO internet, NO NOTHIN'! All I could think was...everyone in South Dakota knows of this huge tornado coming through the state and they're all fully prepared for the worst but safe and sound in their homes, thankful for the warning...and then I'd think of our 'Boat', parked like a sitting duck on the side of Old Highway 31 with not a clue in the world of this record breaking tornado funnel headed our way. Waaah! It was all good though we made it through the storms, and night crew actually got to hang out with some pretty cool animals that night once the walking once again commenced. They met a cat which they named Lola, whom I believe they actually met before the storm and kept her in the van with them until they went back out (surely all Brad's idea), and then later they met a dog whom they named Scrunto. Their story went that they said goodbye to Lola and a few hours later they saw an animal in the dark walking towards them. They all got excited that Lola had returned but as it neared they noticed this thing was waaayy bigger than Lola!
So yeah none of us showered that whole week until Friday. For most of us it was at least only since Sunday morning, but for others it was Saturday night...which doesn't seem like that big of a difference but when you start counting the days 5 is a much bigger number than 4. We were pretty stinky and greasy and grumpy because of our stench and grease-bomb-ness (as I said I didn't really have a problem, which is probably more unhealthy a mindset itself than the lack of showers haha). On Wednesday of that week we came to the legendary Faith sign (I think the Northern walk has stopped there every year for the past 6 years and took pictures, so of course we had to do it up). The sign just says FAITH in big white letters and underneath it says '<-- 28 miles'. So we climbed all over the sign and took some fun pictures there. I wish I could post pictures on this blog! Bahhh!
So after a week of taking baby-wipe showers (which is a pretty common form of self-cleansing on Crossroads...or at least is a really popular one with our group lol) we finally got to shower. I don't remember where, but I know it was pretty flippin' awesomeeeee. The morale of the group bumps up a good 5 notches every time we are able to shower after having been deprived for more than 2 or 3 days (which is less common than I was expecting, but not totally rare). The stinky week ended well and we headed for Sioux Falls for the weekend!
But that's another days blog posting...I've gotta get to bed. Mass at 6:30 AM tomorrow followed by a 3 hour drive back to our ending point in Iowa. We're really close to Illinois though! Wooty woot!

God Bless : )