During the summer of 2019 specifically, June 23rd through July 23rd was the happiest time of my life. A couple of days prior to that my sister Jackie and her boyfriend Tucker came home to pick my little brother Nick and me up from South Dakota and stayed for a day. In the beginning, I was hesitant about whether I wanted to go and be away from home because I never go on vacation. But I guess it was too late and I had to go considering they had spent 8 hours driving all the way from Brookings, South Dakota to Naperville, Illinois. I was originally supposed to only go from 10 days and I thought that was a long time being away. I had many responsibilities at home and my two dogs to take care of. I later realized I was stressing for nothing because my older brother was capable of taking care of them so I let that go. The day we were left I was sad to leave. Not because I was gonna be away from home so long but because my mom was crying because she’s never been away from us that long(she’s a little extra). After we said our “see ya later’s” that’s when the adventure began.

On the eight hour drive, we occupied ourselves by playing mad libs and playing skribbli.o, which is like Pictionary. Most of the drive there was gloomy and rainy during the day, but it was a beautiful drive during the day. Driving through Wisconsin you’d see a lot of bad drivers, mountains, and a lot of interesting looking trees. We stopped a couple of times to get gas and I usually bought snacks, mostly beef jerky just because they have the best jerky Wisconsin. It was a long drive, but it felt short because we had a fun time occupying ourselves during the drive. Soon enough at 10:30 at night we arrived in South Dakota.

The first night there my sister showed me my room and it was cold. My sister likes her house FREEZING cold and it was especially cold in the basement and that’s where I’d be sleeping for the next month. I got used to it eventually. When I walked upstairs into the living room I met her new cat Mack Moe he had fluffy white and grey fur and was the sweetest little thing in the world. I seen her other cat too, his name is Leon but I had seen him the last time I went to South Dakota. Funny story about him, one day my sister was leaving work and she was getting in her and he walked up to her. He didn’t have an owner or anything. She didn’t wanna leave him so she took him to the vet and decided to keep him, but anyway back to my story… Going to South Dakota I was more of a dog person than a cat person, but leaving there I became a crazy cat lady. But we’ll get to that later. One night I was sleeping and I woke up to the cats pounding at the door and I went to go check on them and I opened the door and as soon as I did they both came in and rubbed their head on my leg so I decided id leave the door open for them and both of them slept in my bed. A lot of our days were spent at the lake on our floaties we bought from Walmart that were on sale. One day we went to the lake and there were a lot of horses flies and I got bit 13 times on both of my legs. Definitely not my proudest moments. But I enjoyed spending my time on the water stress-free despite the fact my legs itched every 5 seconds. Some nights we’d go to a grocery store called hi-vee at 12 in the morning which is like a Jewel Osco over here but better, just to get snacks. The first ten days flew by so quick I never wanted to leave. So we didn’t. We decided to stay a couple of weeks. And then stayed for another week cause we didn’t wanna leave more after that and then eventually it was time to go home. But when it event I tried a lot of new things over there and created a lot of new memories. Like I went to my first drive-in movie and blew up fireworks in the middle of the country. At night time you can see all the stars in the dark blue sky. On the last night, we started to be decked to go on a walk on a humid day along a trail that leads to different ponds. as I was walking I realized that the past month was the happiest I’ve ever been. I got to live in the country for a whole month away from the city and all the chaos. I realized then that I love the country so much more than the city and I realized after high school that’s where I wanna live.