Vacation: Day 1

My husband and I just got back from a 4-day vacation to the Black Hills country. Because there is so much to tell, I'm going to write about it in four long posts. Our plan was to drive out there. It was about 700 miles from home to Sturgis, SD where we were staying. We would drive out, maybe see the Badlands, see Deadwood. We would spend one day driving up into Montana to see the Little Big Horn, then over to Bear Tooth Pass which we were hoping had been repaired since the mudslide earlier, then a possible short visit to Yellowstone Park and back across Wyoming that night. Another day would be spent visiting Deadwood some more and seeing Mt. Rushmore and basically taking it easy. On day four, we would drive back, pick up our kids from Grandma's, where they were having a nice vacation from us, and spend a fifth day recovering from our trip.

The initial idea was to go to Deadwood. Hubby started watching the cable show of the same name and became fascinated with the idea of visiting the town. Then we added all the extra not-too-distant attractions.

We wanted to be on the road by 4:00 am, so we were up at about 3:30. I got sick first thing(stubborn case of morning sickness), but that wasn't too bad a thing because I usually only get sick once during the day.

We finished packing and rounded up everything we were going to take. Surprisingly, we managed not to forget anything. We were well prepared for our 12+ hour drive across the midwest.

Because we started so early, it would be at least 2 hours before we could have breakfast because almost everything opens at 6:00.

We got to Winona, MN somewhere around 5:00. We stopped there for gas because Minnesota gas is MUCH cheaper than Wisconsin gas. We made the mistake of pulling into the first station we saw. It was called Freedom. Just the one word: Freedom. Only after filling up did we discover there was a Conoco station just behind it and a little down the road a Kwik Trip, which we would have preferred because of the discount we could have gotten.

We're driving along when all of a sudden the check engine light comes on. So, we pull over and start reading through the owner's manual(yes, those things do come in handy once in awhile). One of the probable causes for the light coming on is low quality gas. We decided that was the problem and continued our trek. The manual said that if it were a poor gas issue, the light would go off eventually, though it may take an entire fresh tank of good gas to flush it out. At some point, the light did go off again. Lesson learned: do NOT stop for gas at a no-name station, especially one called Freedom.

It had just started raining when we found out what was wrong with the car. Awhile later, we drove through the heart of a nasty thunderstorm where visability was so low, we thought of pulling off to let the storm pass, but it didn't last too long. We stopped soon after at McDonald's in Austin, MN for breakfast. Nothing happened there, but it was the fist Sinclare station we saw. Sinclare uses only gas from North America. There are alot of restaraunt/gas stations in Minnesota.

It seemed to take forever to drive across Minnesota, though I'm sure it was only about 4 hours. The landscape is the same as Wisconsin, but their crops looked better because they've been getting more rain over there. The most exciting scenery was the nice looking corn.

We finally got to South Dakota, where the landscape doesn't change much until you're at least 100 miles into the state. Almost immediately after entering the state, we saw a sign for Wall Drug. Throughout the journey, we would see about a hundred Wall Drug signs, all talking about their free ice water, 5 cent coffee and how great the store is.

There wasn't much to see for most of the drive. We stopped in Mitchell and considered going to see the Corn Palace, a building made almost entirely out of corn, with everything in it also made of corn. We drove around town and past the Palace and decided we'd seen enough of it.

Nothing much changed until we crossed the Missouri and entered the real West. The river country was hilly and coming up to it from the East, it seemed the landscape changed almost instantly on the other side. It looked like the pictures we'd seen of Wyoming. After a few miles though, it turned back into the same landscape as before until we came to the Badlands.

We took a "loop" through part of the Badlands which was about 40 miles or so long. It was impressive at first and we took some pictures, but after the first 20 miles, everything looks the same and you're just waiting to see the Interstate again. We did stop at this place where Hubby took a very short, yet expensive helicopter "tour" of the Badlands. It lasted agbout two minutes, but he said it was really cool. I wasn't as eager to ride a helicopter as he was, so I passed.

We came off the loop at Wall, SD. Proud home of the infamous Wall Drug. Now after driving over 200 miles seeing signs about the place, you're brainwashed into going. We just had to stop and see what was so spectacular about it. It was once a regular old drug store and now is more like a mall. Lots of overpriced stuff. We didn't buy anything, but we looked around the whole place. Not once did anyone offer us free ice water, though it was heavily advertised. I suppose you had to ask for it.

After the not so impressive look at Wall Drug, we were back on the Interstate and we finally got to our motel at about 5:30 pm CDT. About halfway through South Dakota we change timezones, so technically, we checked in a about 4:30 pm. We drove down to Deadwood to scout for parking for later and located a few things we thought looked interesting. Then we declared the day over and went to bed early. We had a long day ahead of us.

To be continued....