We made it!

After an exciting, eventful week, we were all sad to leave the Youthworks camp, the Lakota people, and our new friends from Wisconsin. We cleaned the camp, took group photos, said goodbyes, had one last big group hug, and headed out. Little did we know that our trip home would be exciting and eventful as well!
While driving up to the Crazy Horse Memorial, we rounded a bend in Wind Cave National Park to see an entire herd of buffalo crossing the street. While feeding the buffalo at Poker Joe's was exciting on Monday, this was an even more amazing experience to see them in the wild. We did get to see Crazy Horse, Mount Rushmore, and spent some time shopping for souvenirs at the world famous Wall Drug.
Unlike last year, while making our trek across South Dakota, we did not run into any major storm systems. One of our vans did, however, run into a deer! Luckily no one was hurt (except the deer and the Dark Knight rental van) and we were able to make it to Sioux Falls for the night. We picked up another van in Omaha Saturday morning (everyone was SO excited to visit Nebraska again!) and continued our journey home. We were almost back at the church (literally had just gotten onto 581) when a car merged over a lane directly into the side of the big, white bus. Once again, we were fortunate that no one was hurt, but it did delay us getting back to the church. Several of the youth said that it just meant that God wanted them to be able to hang out together just a little while longer. Overall, even with the accidents, this was still the best trip we've had so far. Over the next few days, we will be adding more photos as well as stories from the youth and adults about their experiences this week. Stay tuned!