la granja/la playa

First off, getting to South Dakota is not easy. Delta doesn’t fly there directly, and the Mississippi river floods surround the nearby airports. Figure about a day each way for travel. We went up to visit my grandma, who moved to the small (even by Dakota standards) town of Vermillion. As usual, it was a tiring trip. My grandma had lots of projects for us to work on when we got there. And when I say ‘when we got there’, I mean she gave us jobs when we finally got in at midnight (a couple touristy detours are to blame). But I think she was happy we were there and that was the point anyhow. And spending the fourth in the heartland is always fun.

Fourth fireworks

Yankton Dam

prairie dog

The World's Only Corn palace

 

Our farm

My little brother's a farmer

And then the travel day from hell started. I’ve had longer flights, longer drives, worse airport experiences, but something about this day just whacked me over the head. We left Vermillion at eight AM, drove through a still-flooded Iowa to get to the Omaha airport (if there is a more depressing place than the Omaha airport on a cloudy day…), barely made our flight since it had changed gates and we were now on an RJ (read: tiny plane that can’t handle turbulence), and flew two hours to Salt Lake City. This at least was a pleasant change. You fly straight into the mountains, the airport is full of windows and funky restaurants, and all the people seem healthy and happy, like they mountain biked there or something. But the altitude gives me a pressure headache. So already sick, I flew another ninety minutes to LAX and by the time we finally landed I couldn’t even hear I was so stuffed up.

Normally, I hateee LAX. And LA, really. You get off the plane and immediately feel like a schmuck compared to all the beautiful, perfectly maintained people and boring compared to all the oddballs. You are very aware of your plane hair and unstylish outfit and berate yourself for wearing glasses. Today, however, the entire terminal was under construction. We walked off the plane amidst guys on scaffolding hammering and drilling—definitely a work zone. I’m still not convinced the pilot didn’t drop us off at the wrong gate. So add that slightly more surreal arrival, factor in the climate shock and trying to locate our luggage and you have my state of mind. And then we shuttled to the rental car place and drove three hours up to Santa Barbara.

Yeah, this is in fact why more people don’t try and combine the west coast and the Midwest in their travel itineraries.

Anyhow. Onto my favorite town on the planet.