Day 5 – 7/17/2012

Today was a long travel day (we covered 633 miles through Minnesota and South Dakota) and our theme for the day was “Embrace the Cheese!”  We chose this slogan after our first “cheesy” stop at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.  Kelsey thought we should change it to “Embrace the Corn!” since the first stop was so “corny.”  However, our final stop of the day was at Wall Drug in Wall, SD.  This was a very cheesy, touristy stop, but we had to eat dinner somewhere.  This is an amazing marketing story of creating a huge tourist stop just from the idea of offering “Free Ice Water.”  We saw the first billboard for Wall Drug announcing it was only 355 miles away

This morning we left Ham Lake, MN (a little north of Minneapolis) from our friend Kate’s house a little later than we planned due to Kelsey and Lindsey having a difficult time tearing themselves away from Kate and her adorable 10 week old puppies Bella and Mitt Romney.  I am sure you will see pictures in Kelsey’s post.

One thing I enjoyed over the last few days of driving is listening to some good music.  I do not know if parts of the mid-west are stuck in the 1980’s and 1990’s or if they just have good taste in music, but we have found some great radio stations to listen to.  The sad part is that most of them refer to this period as “classic rock.”  In between stations we to listen to audiobooks.  Today we started to listen as a family to The Hunger Games.

If our day of driving was not long enough already, I unfortunately made it longer by not keeping an eye on the gas gauge.  We ran out of gas in between exits that had gas stations.  By the time I realized we were getting low it was too far to the next exit.  Thank goodness for AAA and the nice gentleman who is a pig farmer and tow truck driver who was only an exit away at the local county fair with his daughter showing some pigs when our call for assistance reached him.  Fortunately we only needed to wait less than 30 minutes for him to arrive.

The weather continues to be hot along the way.  The car thermometer reached 101 degrees at one point this afternoon.  We ended our day by arriving at the Cedar Pass Lodge in the Badlands National Park.  The lodging consists of these very nice ,newly-built, modern cottages.  They are a little bigger than the shed in my backyard with a full bathroom and a nice porch and chairs to look at the scenery.  Both girls have said that they would love to live in one of these.  We would highly recommend staying here if you are ever in these here parts.

I would like to end with my favorite quote from the day.  As we were driving in the Badlands Lindsey stated, “These rocks are blocking my signal.”  Being out here in the park without a “signal” and lights last night was a fantastic experience as we gazed up at an amazing amount of stars without any lights nearby.  We look forward to seeing more of nature’s beauty without a signal.