Solo Vanlife Road Trip to all 50 States _ South Dakota

Welcome to South Dakota. Found this beautiful creek down here. I've never fished water like this before. It's a pretty shallow kind of creek bed, but I'm gonna wait up a little bit and see if I can't catch myself a little brown trout or a rainbow. Got ourselves a little brown. That's our first brown ever. I think I'm gonna let him go. He's a little small. I don't know what size is good to keep. I might have to Google that and then come back out here, but that's a beautiful looking brown trout. Go home, buddy. Good confirmation that I'm running a good setup. Right now I have rigged up what is called a dry dropper or so I've learned since doing a bunch of research on fly fishing. So up top you have a dry fly which has like foam on the top that floats. So you string that up and then the bottom you tie on a little bit of tippet. For me I'm using 5x tippet which is just a different size of strength of fishing line. So we've got a bunch of spools of fishing line here. So I've got from From 3x up to 7x. But. That's exciting. Got my first brown trout ever. Now I've caught a rainbow and a brown but I'm gonna cast a few more and see if I can catch one that I can keep. We got ourselves one. Come on buddy. Look at that. So I decided to let that little one go. See if I can catch something a little bit bigger. If not maybe we'll just catch three of those little small guys and cook them up but ideally I'd want something a little bit bigger to eat. But I think I found my little honey hole. If I just cast it straight into that. Line of water. Right where that little rock juts out. I don't know if I'm pointing the right place on camera. Right where that little rock there kind of juts out before the camera. Kind of across from this little first brown patch. They're all sitting right behind there just coasting. Another one jumping out for the dry and missing. One more luck today. I wasn't able to get any flies at the fly shop this morning because they were closed. And I lost the nymph that I was getting bites on. I got a few bites on the dry fly. None of them fully took though so I think I might go try since we're all dressed up. Try one more spot then get out of here. So this is Spearfish Canyon, South Dakota which is this beautiful canyon in South Dakota which is a new state on our cross-country road trip that we have unlocked. We're about an hour away from Mount Rushmore which is another place I've never been to in the Black Hills I think is what it's called but this is Spearfish Creek in Spearfish Canyon and it's just beautiful out here. It's got these beautiful black and brown cliffs and pine trees and it's just the perfect place you could imagine to go fly fishing. At least it's what I pictured fly fishing looking like before I On our second spot, I did buy this fishing shirt a long time ago because I thought it looked cool. But I feel like now that I have the waders and this fishing shirt, I feel like I look like a try hard. So I don't know if I'm going to wear it again. But I did break one of my waders, one of my wader boots, a.k.a. the most versatile shoe on the planet, my Birkenstocks. Completely snapped. I don't know how that happened, but I will say fishing is so much more fun when you caught something off camera. When I'm fishing and I don't catch anything, I'm saying every curse word known to man, throwing rocks. 20 minutes later. Mother son of a... What are you even caught on? How is this even possible? So I think I saw somewhere online that you can, these trout can see you from like 30, 40 feet away. So I'm gonna go across the river and then kind of maybe like right there and cast up into that little... That little fast water seam. Oh, I see a couple of little guys over here. Little tiny ones. I still haven't figured out how to cast into the wind. I don't know if there is a technique for it or if like you just need more weight on your line or something, but it has most definitely not been working for me. Trying to cast upstream into the wind. Oh my God, it's literally wrapped around 15 grams. I think it's wrapped around my neck. Okay, it's time to get out of here. Pretty windy. This is my cuttlefish. We caught a few. I'm happy with it. See if we can find a nice local spot down in town to grab some lunch before we continue onward. I think we're staying in South Dakota today because I don't really feel like driving far. So we just found this local park that's kind of right at the edge of town. I figured I'm just gonna park here and instead of driving through town take the e-bike out. Kind of get a better lay of the land that way. It's so convenient how this thing folds up and fits right in the back of the van. And honestly one of my favorite things about this bike is the thumb throttle. most bikes it's like a throttle you have to like twist like a like a motorcycle but this one you just press the thumb throttle and it gets going we're in turbo mode right now and this thing is fast it's got some crazy get up to it this park's kind of cool it's like right on the river probably could have came down here to catch some fish honestly this water looks way nicer for casting It's a lot more, like, open. But, before we go right around and try to find somewhere to eat, I do want to say thank you to Electric for sponsoring this video. They have been a long-time sponsor of the channel, and I absolutely... I love this bike and I know I say this every single time but it is genuinely one of the best highest quality e-bikes you can get for the price. It is insane how cheap they are with still being the highest quality. And almost everything that you see on this bike was engineered from the ground up by Lectra. The brakes, the tires, the suspension, almost every single thing on this bike is custom made by them. for the last four years and made to fit perfectly and work with this bike and be of the highest quality. it's just such a nice fun way to get around town or to explore a campsite or whatever you want to do with this e-bike. this e-bike can pretty much handle anything. so i love this thing. this is it. this is downtown Spearfish. of course they got the obligatory Sasquatch and a bunch of chows. so much cool restaurants and it looks like it's a pretty lively downtown area. A lot of people out walking around on the main street. Got a few places that I might want to get food at. I haven't fully decided yet. I'm going to ride around a little more and see what's around. So I think I found where we're going to get food. Killian's Food and Drink. It says on the menu they have trout. And that's what I want, so this is where we're going. But this is the type of stuff I wouldn't be able to find without my bike. And... Father's Day is coming up and this bike makes the perfect Father's Day gift. I actually got my dad one and he's been having a blast riding around. But they've got their Father's Day sale going on from June 5th to June 22nd and this bike is the perfect gift. So if you've been looking for something to get, click the link that will be in the description of this video and get the bike while it's on sale. Anyways, let's eat. There we go. We did catch a few today so I feel like I've earned being able to eat one. That's a good one. That looks beautiful and it smells so good and honestly this fillet isn't that much bigger than the fish I caught. I should have just kept the one that I caught. That is fantastic. It's almost like it's got like a coconut curry sauce around the outside and the bottom. It's got Brussels and peppers and a bunch of other stuff. That's really, really good. Not gonna lie, I finished that in about three minutes. Absolutely decimated everything on this plate. It was genuinely fantastic. This is why I love to just go into a random spot and not looking it up and trying something you normally wouldn't try, which is, for me, trout. Because sometimes it's a miss and sometimes you don't get something you really like, but sometimes you just get something that completely changes what you thought you liked. That was not, in no way, shape or form, and something I would order on the menu at a normal place. I think that was genuinely one of the best fish dinners I've ever had. Anyways. We're heading back to the van. There's a viewing area there. There's a viewing area over there. Okay, cool. It's a pretty neat place. So is this still an active hatchery? We do. We get them from Saratoga Fish Hatchery over in Wyoming, but we do still stock. So we're a national hatchery, so we stock to the military bases. Look at that behemoth. That thing is massive. But I rode past my my car to go check out the fish hatchery. uh sadly you can't have bikes. i got stopped by a very kind woman at the entrance who gave me a bunch of information on apparently the fish from the hatchery because they're they're huge they're massive but they don't flow into the river they just hatch them there and then they stock lakes all over wyoming and south dakota but in 2023 the river flooded and a bunch of the fish escaped which is pretty funny but we're back home. seriously though i do love this bike it's one of the best e-bikes that i have ever ridden and you can't beat that that it's foldable, it's a great all-around bike. I think a mosquito just flew into my eyeball. Oh, is it in there? Can you see it? Oh, I think it is in there. Beautiful. Now we have got to find a spot that we can park this bus. There's a campground right next to where we're staying, but I don't really feel like paying. All right, so after some planning for the last 10 minutes, I turned the van on to get some AC back here because it is very hot and I'm stinky and covered in fish guts and pollen. And dirt, so I do need a shower. I also do want to squeeze in the gym today. I think that means I have to go to Planet Fitness, but trouble with that is this city doesn't have a Planet Fitness. The only one that does is the next one over, Rapid City, and that's 45 minutes away. So I think we might be parking in a parking lot tonight at Planet Fitness. Got something pretty important to take into the gym shower. I just had to air dry for 15 minutes. There's no heartbreak like finishing a shower and then realizing you don't have a towel. But I am starving. I'm extremely hungry. I haven't eaten anywhere near enough today, so I'm gonna treat myself a little bit. We're gonna get ourselves some Wendy's for dinner because since I haven't eaten a lot and I've been pretty active today, it somehow fits into my macros to get a Baconator at Wendy's. But no fries, just the Baconator. I'm not gonna lie, I am extremely excited for this Baconator. I have not had one of those in so long. I will say this is the first time in the van it's felt like not being on the West Coast. It's just starting to feel like the East Coast slash Midwest with just the way the town looks and the trees and the vibes and the smell. I don't know, it just feels very familiar. I just do a Baconator, just the sandwich. And can I get no mayonnaise on that? Package acquired and an extra large root beer. I think we're gonna keep, we're gonna make this home tonight and stay in the Planet Fitness parking lot. Long day. I did plan to do quite a bit more with my day, but kind of got sidetracked fishing for five hours. I've had a lot of people commenting on my videos that they want me to do multi-day videos. So I decided this is going to be a multi-day video instead of trying to cram everything I wanted to do in one day. But I could turn my inverter on and then I I'm going to watch a movie and get to bed because I am beat. Something I always worry about when I'm stealth camping 2 in the van and I'm watching TV or I'm playing video games and I'm yelling at the screen with my friends is that like people can hear outside. I've tested it before and you can't really hear it unless it's like super, super loud and it's super, super quiet outside. Like when a scandalous scene comes on the TV and like I'm just laying in bed watching a movie. it's such a weird feeling thinking about like people in the parking lot walking by and hearing that or like me yelling at my friends on Xbox well anyways i'm gonna watch a movie about i am worried that i might get kicked out of this spot i know i say that like every time but this one actually has mixed reviews online where people are saying they've stayed here and they've gotten kicked out or asked to leave i should say kicked out and they it says they're cracking down on staying here but this is a 24 7 Planet Fitness and i have a membership and i use the gym so we'll see uh either i'll see you in the middle of the night when we get kicked out or i'll see you in the morning Good morning. We made it to the morning. We didn't get kicked out and I was able to hit the gym first thing this morning. So we just got back from working out and showering. Getting that over with for the day. It's a little bit cloudy out today. Which is nice because I haven't been in an area where there's a lot of storms in the Midwest. Although a little bit scary because they get tornadoes. It's kind of exciting. I love storms. Reminds me of home. Making ourselves a little breakfast. I get so turned off by this tube meat. And this is genuinely one of my favorite breakfasts that I get to eat when I'm trying to get a lot of protein for not a lot of calories. Turkey sausage, egg white, some mozzarella. And then you take that and top it with whatever sauces you want. In my case, I'm using some sriracha and Arby's sauce. And then you eat it with a bag of these as your spoon. And it ends up being like 52 grams of protein for 430 calories. It's an easy way to get a lot of protein in the morning. Cheers. Also, since I've been out here, I think I've murdered entire bloodlines of bugs with the front of my car. I've had to refill my windshield washer fluid reservoir like 16 times. Just like unlimited bugs. Just absolutely massacred by this windshield anytime I drive down the road. And no matter how many times I clean my windshield off or use the windshield wiper fluid, it just never stops. It's never ending. But I was finally able to find something that's debug and not the winter kind. So hopefully this does a little bit better. The only goal that I have today is to make it to Mount Rushmore. See if it's as underwhelming as I've heard because I've never been to Mount Rushmore but I've heard from people that have been that it's pretty underwhelming once you get there. But I intend to find out for myself. But Slim, what if you win? Wouldn't it be weird? Why? So you guys can just lie to get me here. So you can sit me here next to Britney Spears. Yep. Gutzon Borglum, that is a crazy name. I just read apparently that's the guy who designed it. And his son finished it once he died, so pretty cool. Pretty serendipitous hall of flags of all the US states. For my cross country road trip going to every single state. Shout out Maryland, that's where I'm from. But anyways. There it is in all its glory. I wish you could get closer. You do have to stay. Looks like there is stairs over there, but I don't know if you can get to them. I definitely wouldn't say it's overwhelming. It is a little bit weird. Their noses are huge, but I think it's pretty cool, especially when you think about how it was built by 400 workers with dynamites and drill, blowing out the side of a mountain to build these phases into it. I read on one of the sheets, Fun fact, Jefferson was supposed to be to the right side of Washington, but the rock was too cracked, so they just blew his entire face off and then moved him over to the left. And from what I'm reading, they planned for the entire monument to be from the head all the way down to the waist. But then World War II happened and that kind of got scrapped. So all we got was the heads. They also planned to have a secret hall of documents behind Mount Rushmore. But that also got canceled out by World War II. So the hallway behind the monument was only like half finished or something. But yeah, I definitely wouldn't say it's underwhelming. I don't know if I would necessarily come back to check it out again, maybe in 30 years. I can bring my kids or something. But I think when you take into account... Like the history and how it was built it's kind of cool and also the reason that they built it here in granite is because granite erodes like one inch every 10,000 years so it'll be pretty much the same for a while unless something catastrophic happens. It happens. I've got a mountain of chores that I have to do and literally a mountain of laundry down to my last pair of underwear so I've got to keep on keeping on down this mountain back into another town on my way to my next state on this road trip. Because I got to do laundry, among a bunch of other things.