The pull of South Dakota began when I was in France. For some reason, I felt impelled to visit South Dakota, to study Lakota, the Native American language spoken by the native people of western South Dakota, and to ride a galloping horse across the rolling, golden plains - what a romantic vision - and indeed I'm very much a romantic and a dreamer. Several months later, I did all of these things. I learned to follow my heart and was glad for it.

I had planned my trip for the summer of 1999, first with the strawbale house builds in Montana, on the Crow Indian Reservation, then on to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, followed by a trip back east to visit my parents in PA and then back west via New Mexico. A good friend of mine, Janet, decided to accompany me on the trip a few weeks before I was ready to leave. Neither one of us had much money for this trip, so we decided it would be budget travel - very low budget travel. This meant camping and mostly traveling by bus (you could get a $69 ticket one way to anywhere in the continental US if you bought it 14 days in advance).

We decided to fly up to Seattle (price wasn't much more than the bus) to meet with the Red Feather Group who were in charge of building the strawbale houses. When we arrived, we found out that because of a tornado in South Dakota a few weeks before, the second build was cancelled. We traveled by van with the Red Feather Group to Montana and stayed for two weeks, helping build a strawbale house for a Native American family (see Strawbale House Story).

We then traveled to South Dakota with a friend and stayed there for three weeks, visiting the Black Hills, riding horses through the badlands, and attending the Pine Ridge Powwow and Rodeo. It was then, on departing from South Dakota, that we began our Greyhound bus adventure.

At first it seemed fine, not bad at all. We had been warned about the misery of long distance bus travel, with stories of horrendous 10-hour bus rides - 10 hours - that's nothing! But the trip east through South Dakota was comfortable and was only about one-third full. This peace all ended when we reached Omaha, Nebraska at 1am - a nasty little bus station, crammed full with people. We finally found the line for the bus to Chicago and waited to get on. We barely got on - it was packed full. Janet and I had to sit in seats apart from each other. My seatmate was a little old lady heading to Iowa to visit some family. We changed our bus in Chicago and headed towards Pennsylvania. Somewhere in Ohio, at a rest stop, I bought some bagels and put them above me in the storage rack for later. A few hours later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw a girl (probably about 15) who was handing me a folded napkin. I unfolded it and saw that she had written me a note in eye pencil (that's what it looked like, asking me if she could have a piece of my bagel, as she was very hungry and had no money to buy any food because her mother had only given her enough money for the bus ticket. I turned back and looked over at her. She just looked at me and shrugged her shoulders and looked away. I took down the bag and gave her one of the bagels, which she quickly devoured after thanking me. She got off at the next stop. I thought about her afterward, wondering what her story was, and if she was perhaps a run-away. I hadn't had the guts to question her about it.

Two days later, we arrived in Pittsburgh, PA, where my parents picked us up and stayed with them for 6 days. Then we embarked again on our bus journey - this time to New Mexico. Maybe all would have been fine, except that our bus was involved in an accident in Indiana, in which the bus hit a car towed by a moving van. This involved waiting for the police to arrive and, although the bus was not apparently damaged, upon arriving in Chicago we found out that our bus would not continue on to Denver, as planned, but we would have to wait for the next bus several hours later. It was here that we met the Czech extreme downhill ski racer who rode with us to Denver. He was coming to Colorado to train for this event. The delay in our bus leaving Chicago caused us to miss our connection in Denver to New Mexico, so we had a layover in Denver for over 12 hours. Well, it was daytime, so we were able to wander around this city for the day, exploring - not too bad, but this stretched our two-day bus trip into a three-day bus trip. So, we ended up taking the night bus to New Mexico from Denver - what a trip that was. The driver drove like a maniac, squealing around hairpin turns like a madman. I was trying to sleep ("trying" is the keyword here) and had to hold on to the armrest for fear of being thrown onto the floor by the crazy antics of the driver. But we arrived in one piece in Taos, New Mexico, where we spent a few days. We had originally planned to return to San Francisco from New Mexico, but both of us were so entranced with the ranch that we had visited on Pine Ridge in South Dakota, that we thought we should return there for a few more days of riding horses….and so we did, even with the nuisance of further long bus trips. We discovered the Powder River Line and other various regional bus lines were much better than the Greyhound lines - which were the worst. We were lucky that we had regional lines from New Mexico to South Dakota. On the way to Colorado, we met a man that became very interested in the fact that Janet was German. He said he had a story to tell her. Janet was sitting in the seat behind me so he sat next to her and began his story. Well, his story went on and on forever and lucky me, sitting in front of them, I could ease in and out of listening to the story, depending on whether it was interesting or not. I guess it must not have been that compelling, as it seems I have forgotten it (keeping in mind that two years have past). Though I do remember it had something to do with World War II and also to do with parachuting and some amazing man who was so invincible. The parachuting part was the most interesting to listen to - I do remember that. And also, that this man, when he told his story, always emphasized people's height - and if they were tall, he made it sound how great it was. He did it so many times that I had to question him about it, and he seemed to react defensively, saying that his ex-wife had only been 5'3". But you know, I have never heard anyone talk about people's height so much as he, and the issue of height was not integral to his stories. Well, Janet finally couldn't take it any more and told him she needed a break from his story. He retreated to his seat and left us in peace for the rest of the trip.

Well, you know the real problem with long distance bus travel? It's not the fact of being on the bus for so long, but the fact of how you often need to change buses at 3am and the next one leaves at 6am and you have no idea if you'll even be able to get on the next bus or not (might be full when it arrives) or it might be late and you miss your connection and are stuck somewhere. After so many bus trips, this began really grating on us and by the time we reached Cheyenne, Wyoming at 2am, we felt we were losing our minds - we just started laughing about it. The bus rides made us miserable for the most part, but we just couldn't complain anymore, and just had to laugh. The laughing was contagious and soon everyone around us in the bus station was laughing too - why not?! Made us feel better anyway.

Well, we reached South Dakota and had a nice time at the ranch for 4 days, sleeping in a tipi, and riding horses every day up into the hills….it was wonderful. At the end of those 4 days, it was finally time to return to San Francisco - to go home. Our last bus trip…..we departed South Dakota and arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming once more at 1am. Too bad our next bus didn't leave until 7am! So what did we do? We slept in the bus station. It was the first (and probably - I would hope) the last time I do that. Nothing happened - but it's not the most appealing place to sleep. Janet and I put our luggage between us, put in some earplugs and went to sleep - amazingly I actually was able to sleep a little bit, although I woke up often. The rest of the trip was uneventful and we finally arrived in San Francisco, after two months of travel through the heartland of America. The discomfort of this bus travel pales in comparison to taking a long bus trip in Morocco! (see The Morocco Story)

August 2001 Kristin Piljay