Rush and More

Well, there it is! We saw Mount Rushmore. And if you haven't yet, you should. We left Sturgis, fueled up in Rapid City and drove into the Black Hills to see the Presidents. It really is very impressive and very well done. The visitors center has a very informative movie and interesting exhibits. The gift shop even had one of the living rock drillers there that you could meet and talk too. I'm glad we went.

After the trip up the hill to see the Presidents, we went up a whole bunch of other hills. They don't call it the Black HILLS for nothin'. I spent a lot of time in second gear. We went generally South and wound up taking the scenic Wildlife Loop Road through Custer State Park. You know, there are over 1500 bison in the park and we didn't see a one. The roundup is this weekend so they must have all been in hiding. But we did see some turkey and deer and antelope.

About half-way through the loop, we were accosted by this group of highway men ...er donkies. They were begging for food from all the cars.

After we left the park we found our way back up to I90 and headed East about 50 miles where we made a stop at Wall Drugs.

Since it was getting late, we ate dinner in their Western Art Cafe and then spent the night in their parking lot. I didn't notice when we parked that the main rail line goes through about 100' from where we stopped. But I noticed in the middle of the night!

The next morning we headed out of town on route 240, which is a loop road that took us through Badlands National Park. It's only about a 30 mile drive but you'd think you left this world from the look of the scenery.

They also had some of the hiding bison but we did manage to come upon this group of wild sheep resting at the side of the road.

Back out onto I90 and down the road. Our next stop was in Mitchell, home to the famous Corn Palace. Each year a theme is chosen and designed to be constructed of nothing but different types and colors of corn. Over 275,000 ears of corn are sawed down the middle and attached to the front of the building to make the murals.

And, as always, there are photo ops.

Mitchell is also one of the locations for Cabela's outfitters, so we just had to stop and see if there was anything we couldn't live without. I guess you know the answer to that.

That wrapped up our sightseeing for a little bit and we went on to a Cracker Barrel in Sioux Falls, SD to boondock for the night. The best night we've ever spent at a CB. This morning we hit the road after once again fueling up and made tracks East to the tune of 475 miles.

Tonight we are at a Walmart parking lot located in Appleton, Wisconsin. A storm has just blown through and tomorrow looks to be anther great day. From here we're headed to the UP, Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We expect to end the day tomorrow just into MI proper after crossing over the Mackinaw Bridge. Then it will take a couple of days of wandering down the West side before turning East to our son's place. That should put us there on Saturday. Right on time.