Leaving Manch Vegas

So...this morning we woke up in the Comfort Inn to this:

It's kind of hard to make out, but our truck and trailer were nearly washed away overnight since we had to park on a dirt driveway. Fine, fine...it's an exaggeration, but it rained A LOT! We lucked out and just before we got going it let up enough to get packed up and on our way.

We kind of wish the rain had kept going, though. If it had, we might not have made our first stop of the day - the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.

We absolutely KNEW that it was a tourist trap and just the sort of thing we didn't care about, but for some reason the barrage of billboards worked on us and in we went. As Will described it, it wasn't much more than a high school auditorium decorated with corn. Decorated once a year every year at the cost of $100,000 no less!! Insanity. And so not worth it. What you see behind us in the photo is a flea marketish gift shop on the basketball floor. (No joke) There were some corn related items for sale, but also a lot of other crap that no one should ever buy. This includes these menacing looking kitties here. We were duly punished for the stop by having to walk back to the car in another downpour. We totally deserved it. At least we didn't have to pay to get in.

From the Corn Palace we returned to the monotony of I-90 West. Nothing of note happened for an hour or so. No renagade flies, just lots and lots of Wall Drug billboards, nearly all of which had grievous quote misuse. We crossed the Missouri, where just as we'd read, the landscape changed instantly from the rolling farm plains of the midwest to the dry, brown hills of the West. It was an exciting moment for us finally being in the West. We noted it by taking blurry pictures out the window, which aren't worth of posting.

Luckily our need for gas coincided perfectly with the Pioneer Auto Show in Murdo, SD. "I Breathe a Different Way" Tom, a MA native was nice enough to let us bring Bella on the tour and she was psyched to see the last intact General Lee (out of the 17 produced for the show) according to the placard. The only weird thing is that it had door handles and it looked like the doors opened and we were sure that on the show it was welded shut into one panel... odd. Matt, can you confirm? They have over 250 vintage cars and a bunch of classic motorcycles on display there, along with random other stuff like tractors, dairy equipment and a sweet collection of old outboard motors. In an ad we saw they also claim to have lots of Betty Boob (sic) memorabilia. We missed that part. All in all it was well worth the admission fee, especially since it was Bella's first-ever tourist trap! She was so happy to finally meet The King and sniff his personal motorcycle.

We motored on to the Badlands, which were amazing. There's an easy scenic route off I-90 and even though we had to rush through a little bit to get to civilization (aka cell service) for Will's phone interview, we got to walk around a bit and drove through the park for about 45 minutes.

Check out Bella taking in the view.
From the Badlands we sped right on "past" Wall Drug and landed in Rapid City, SD for the night just in time to check into the Holiday Inn Express (no steam cleaning fee at this one!) and for Will to take the call for his interview. South Dakota is pretty incredible. Our hotel is crammed into a commercial area with lots of actvity, but during Will's interview I took Bella for a run and it didn't take us long to be out in the plains again. It was pretty cool, but maybe a little "all or nothing for my taste."

Sad to say we dined at the Outback, mate. It was right next door and was just as good as any of the other chains nearby. Also we'd left Bella loose in the room and wanted to make it a quick trip. We ended up having a decent local beer (the first round of which fell during happy hour - yay!) and ok food, so all was not lost. The best part was getting back to the hotel to find everything looking perfect and Bella sleeping. Man, she can sleep. This is her five minutes after we get in the truck.

So we're off again this morning. We're getting excited to be so close to San Francisco, so we're giving some thought to hightailing it the rest of the way. If we see something interesting we'll definitely stop, but the plan will be to get as far as we can each day and hopefully we'll be HOME soon!

Mad props to Angela for getting the wordy gurdy! The answer was indeed Fromage Homage.

Who knew a New Hampshire native could some up with something so international!

Here's today's wordy gurdy:

Native's depression

Here's where I insert another under protest from Will. The reasons for the protest will be divulged in our next post, but don't let it stop you from spending all day trying to solve it!

Semi-biographical, historical midwestern author's advertising devices.

Git 'r done.