Imagine being twenty-three years old, still under the illusion that your parents are sane, and receiving THIS phone call one Saturday morning:

Me: Hello?

Dad: Hey, it’s Dad. I’m going to walk across South Dakota.

Now let’s just pause here for a moment. Let it sink in a little, if you will.

South Dakota, for those of you that are unaware, is a state. Of land, not of mind.

Now if my father had decided to walk across, say, Rhode Island, that would be one thing. (From the way it looks on the map, I can only assume that people walk across Rhode Island every morning when they cross the street to buy coffee. I suspect that if you have allergies in Rhode Island, you quite regularly sneeze yourself right into Massachusetts.)

But South Dakota is quite a different story. It's BIG.

Me: Did you just say you’re going to walk ....

Dad: Across South Dakota. Yes.

Me: Why would you do that?

Dad: I read an article about a woman who walked across the United States for political reasons.

Me: Oh. Do you have political reasons?

Dad: Nope.

I should point out that by this point in my life, I thought I was used to bouts of endearing-madness from my father. When I was seven he made our family move from Montana to Idaho in a cattle truck. Another time he convinced me to help round up a herd of buffalo. The man has been known to duck hunt by dressing up like a duck.

But walking across South Dakota opened up a whole new dimension of crazy.....

(TO BE CONTINUED....)