one of the thousands of reasons south dakota is the best.

today was a hard day for me, i think that the "high" of the last month has dropped and i was feeling low as hell and missing my friends, family and the pacific TERRIBLY. when i got home from work i took a nap in hopes of sleeping my sadness away and decided to take Baktash to one of my favorite fields in sodak. we packed a picinic dinner and a blanket and drove out into the country. we stopped at this place that is spectacular where you can see for miles, rolling hills of yellow sunflowers, cattle grazing and cotton ball clouds. i love it there.

then a big old pick up truck drives up to us, (we were nestled in his "road" pretty far) we were nervous he'd flash us his shot gun and tell us to get the hell out. well he turned out to be amazing and fascinating. we shot the breeze for an hour and baktash and i felt like were watching a movie or a magic show, b/c this man was the QUINTESSENTIAL cowboy/rancher. he was 21 and had gruff exterior with a super awesome drawl. and the best part, was that he was wearing a cowboy hat with a fake rose pinned on the side that had fake raindrops on it. it was amazing. i thought to myself as i stared at this man with complete adoration and awe, that only he could pull this off and still be a tough cowboy that we would entrust our lives to.

we were shooting it and he offered to take us for a drive in his pickup on their 2,500 acres of rolling hills and prairies. he wanted to drive us UP a rocky hill so that we could look out and see mount rushmore from his property. so we agreed (OF COURSE!!!) and off we went.

baktash was having the time of his life. we went up a huge steep rocky hill in this dudes pickup and he wasn't exactly going slow in the least bit. it was so exciting.

for a minute i looked over at baktash and couldn't believe what we were doing. and how the hell we got to where we are. who would have ever thought we'd be in south dakota rallying in Mr. Bishop's dodge pickup around his thousands of ranchland?? i laughed to myself and since then baktash and i have had such a huge smile on our face.

the last thing Mr. Bishop said to us before we got out of his pickup is, (he's 21, by the way, been ranching since he was 9) "yeah, well, i went to new york one time and some lady was like, i get my groceries delivered to my door, meat and everything. and i was like, 'lady, do you even know where you get that meat?' i mean, those people from california and new york, they think that this here meat just comes out of their freezer, i mean literally! and what people seem to forget is that that meat comes from hard working people like myself and my family."

after that, we thanked him and he dropped us back off at our car. but you wont believe how the fantastic evening ended with Mr. Bishop, he shook baktash's hand and tipped his cowboy hat to me. and he wasn't putting us on. he did that when i first met him too. he actually took his whole hat off to shake my hand.

you never know who the heck you'll meet and what they are like. this hard core rancher in a huge dodge pickup was telling us how amazing it is to watch the sunflowers moving with the sun and how alive it makes him feel, and how blessed we are to have mother nature treat us so kindly. he knew every flower and every plant.

just thought i'd share with you this cute little vignette into mine and baktash's life here in south dakota.

its pretty damn fantastic.