High in the Mountains of South Dakota

 

Hello! This is where the adventure starts. Well, sort of at least. The adventure technically started much earlier, with us laughing about the idea for months until there was a lot less laughing and a lot more "actually, yeah...."-ing. Which brought us to here: Rapid City, South Dakota. Of all places.

More specifically, things started with us dying on the plane. You know, a real Lost or Manifest experience. There was turbulence, we died, and that started everything.

Just kidding (maybe?) anyway, somehow we found ourselves landing in the Rapid City airport. "Port", singular, is a good description. This place is small. And I fly to the middle of nowhere all the time and I thought this place was small. Don't believe me? 100 feet from the terminal we had to stop our rental car for a herd of deer to cross the road. 500 feet beyond that we were surrounded by horses and cows and not a soul in sight.

Luckily Rapid City turned out to be bigger than their airport at least. There was some good coffee, a place called Essence of Coffee welcomed us home and revived us from our plane death (it definitely happened okay). Ah, we'd found civilization, this place is starting to look pretty good and livable.

Which brings me to Day 2. Before I dive in, I need to give you some context about us. We are vanilla people living a vanilla life, vanilla here meaning "plain, without the assistance of hardcore drugs". No weed, no crack, no smoke, no alcohol. The hardest drug we do is decaffeinated coffee. So accidentally doing peyote with a bunch of Native Americans was a huge surprise.

I know what you're thinking: "Peyote?! Y'all need Jesus,"... but he's the one who gave it to us. Okay okay, let me back up. So it was Sunday. We woke up, found a nice church to go to, got there on time and went on in. The priest gave us a kind of funny look, clearly surprised to see some out-of-towners. Everything seemed so normal. I even assured Evan church would be in English so we could easily follow what was going on. Wrong! Everyone stands up and starts speaking a language I've never heard before. Then of all horrors, the entire church turns to the back and faces us! Still chanting. Then left, then right, then I don't even know anymore. It was like a alternate universe electric slide, smoke machine included. We turn again and notice the smoke wafting in waves above the congregation. People are carrying it around, blowing it into people's faces. This doesn't smell like any incense I know, and is definitely not the standard church incense. As the source gets closer, I see that it's almost like a ball of dried leaves burning inside an upside-down tortoise shell, being fanned with a giant eagle's feather. I don't know about you, but the only thing I know of that comes burning in a tortoise shell and wafted with an eagle's feather is: peyote. Which is the point when I notice that almost every single person present is a Native American. I dug around and found that we were in a Lakota church, where they blended Christian and Lakota ceremonies and said prayers in Lakota. We'd stumbled into the one place in South Dakota where it's legal to get high. *cue slow applause*

We chilled in Rapid City a few days, letting the peyote run its course exploring our new home state. Then came DMV Day. Woke up early, like 6am early which is truly a feat for us.Went to the DMV... and came out with a South Dakota drivers license. It's official, we did the crazy plan and it worked! We are now residents of South Dakota, home sweet home! Next was to convert my car, MeShip, to join us on this crazy venture. To make that official we drove hours to Deadwood and got new license plates. And you know what? Deadwood kinda sucked. I'm glad we're not from there. If you like gambling and day drinking, great place. 10/10, you should definitely go there, and I'll go somewhere else. The Black Hills were very cool though, dark forest and mysterious. And with that, we were all official!

So anyway, why South Dakota? I'm sure you want to know how on Earth that got on our radar. It's simple: Mount Rushmore. They are very very proud of Mount Rushmore, and so are we. Drove to go see it. It's bigger than you expect, then much smaller than you expect, then bigger again, then smaller again. Thanks movies, for messing up my expectations. Anyway, cool faces! And now that's on our licenses and car plates, awww yeah. True South Dakotan.

 

Oh yeah, and we saw Big Foot. Looked pretty chill, must have also found the peyote.

Places of note:

Essence of Coffee - great place all around, plus the Mediterranean Scramble changed my life

Colonial House Restaurant and Bar - good for breakfast, went here after we became official :)

From Software Engineers to South Dakotan Travelers

Last week, we were software engineers, working for Google in Mountain View.

Now, we're on a road in the South Dakotan wilderness, waiting for a herd of deer to pass.

What happened?

What Happened

In mid-2021, a friend was telling Kim and me about how some people move to South Dakota to become Travelers. I didn't realize he was joking, so I kept thinking about it.

Normally, such a move would be insane. Who would leave their home state and their nice comfortable home to go wander around the tundra? 0

But maybe it's not really that insane. Because of Covid-19, California is completely locked down, we're all working remotely anyway, yet still paying ridiculous rents. 1 Why work remotely from an overpriced bay area apartment, when I could work remotely from anywhere else in the western hemisphere?

An Unrelated and Unconvincing Argument

California has the highest income tax, at 13.3%, and the highest capital gains tax, at 13.3%. This is because California considers capital gains as ordinary income. Other states don't do this!

This wasn't a factor in our considerations. I would also advise caution for anyone who leaves California for tax reasons, as California very aggressively tries to tax people who leave the state, because they don't like losing those taxes.

Nope, we moved to South Dakota because we love Mount Rushmore. We've always loved Mount Rushmore!

Why Travelers Love South Dakota

Changing residency is usually quite difficult. Most states require that you spend at least 183 days of the year in that state, before you can be considered a resident. But what if you want to travel around and visit various states?

Enter South Dakota. They have an unusual rule: you only need to spend one day there to be considered a resident.

Want to become a South Dakotan resident? Just follow the three easy steps on South Dakota's website:

1. Get a physical address in South Dakota. For example, you can purchase a campground address or PO box, for around $100/year.
2. Stay one night at a South Dakota address. Even a hotel counts!
3. Head on over to the DMV to change your residency and get a new driver's license!

Why South Dakota Loves Travelers

Why does South Dakota have an entire website advertising how easy it is to move there? I'm not sure, but I suspect it has something to do with federal grant money. If the federal government gives money according to population count, a state would love to have more residents which travel often and don't use many state resources... but that's just a suspicion.

The Happiest DMV in the United States

Anywhere else, the Department of Motor Vehicles has a reputation for unpleasant experiences. However, there is an exception, in Rapid City, South Dakota, where the DMV is a place of congratulations and celebration.

We arrived there at 7am, on December 14th, 2021. There was a line of other walk-ins, waiting in the cold for the doors to open. 2

This wasn't a normal line of freezing-cold miserable DMV-goers. This was a bunch of people with excitement in their eyes, smiling and shivering!

We were smiling too! We knew we were leaving behind a stressful life in an overcrowded city, isolated in small apartments, afraid to go outside... and starting new lives as Travelers.

The DMV opened, and we all settled in the chairs inside, and listened to the folks ahead of us.

"Congratulations, you're now a South Dakotan resident!" the DMV agent said to another couple from California, who then unleashed a glorious high-five. As they passed, I gave them a nod and said, "Congratulations!" and they said, "Good luck!" back. It was a beautiful moment, there in that DMV in South Dakota at 7am.

Apparently this is a common occurrence in the Rapid City DMV, in the mornings in December where people switch residency before the year ends.

We were happy, but we were nervous, too. We had to gather and bring a lot of documents: social security card, passport, driver's license, a receipt for the physical address, a piece of mail with that new address, and proof that we stayed in a hotel there. If we had forgotten something important, we might have to call our parents to overnight ship it, and hope it arrived before we had to leave.

The Residency Affidavit

We also had to sign the Residency Affidavit for South Dakota Residents who Travel and Do Not Have a Residence in Another State, which confirmed that South Dakota is our new state of residence, and we intend to return to South Dakota after any traveling. This is important, to be considered a legal resident of the state.

We happily signed it. We love South Dakota. We love Mount Rushmore!

As a New South Dakotan Resident

"Congratulations, you're now a South Dakotan resident!" the agent said to us. It was official! We gave a heart-felt thanks to them, and stepped out the door, holding our shiny new South Dakota driver's licenses.

It was surreal. The next ten minutes we spent in the car, just looking at them. These little plastic cards, that we'd spent the last month preparing for. We were officially travelers!

We celebrated with breakfast at Colonial House. The waitress saw us looking at our new Driver's license and right off the bat, asked us, "Are you new residents?"

Apparently this is a common thing up there!

A Desolate Road in South Dakota

Now, we're in the South Dakotan wilderness, on a road to the Rapid City Airport, waiting for a herd of deer to pass.

Soon, we fly to Tennessee, to stay in a Knoxville AirBnB.

After that, who knows!