Friday, May 22nd

Faye
Ok, we actually passed up The Devil’s Tower today, not Thursday, but it fit well into yesterday’s paragraph. Today I found a new man, but he soon got shot during a poker game. Life in Wyoming! – Well, Deadwood WY anyway. More later.

To start from the beginning, after spending Thursday night in Wall, SD, we decided we had to check out the famous Wall Drug before leaving town. It was worth the visit, only because it was not out of our way at all. Then we headed to The Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore. Rushmore is one of the most photogenic places ever – I don’t think we got a bad picture, and we took a lot. There were lots of people there and we were very happy to be there in May, not July or August!

We also went to see the Crazy Horse Monument, which was good, but couldn’t compare with Rushmore. Kelly kept up her tradition of finding local wineries to check out. This time it was Prairie Berries. The Black Hills are very pretty and we were happy to spend a little time on smaller, scenic roads. My only complaint so far is that pretty much every restaurant we’ve been to has had the same boring, “American” menu – lots of fried and fatty, bland foods. That should improve in CA, if not sooner. Oh, about the man getting shot - he was an actor playing Wild Bill Hickock in an old west saloon in Deadwood, and he liked to draw the audience, including me, into his performances.

Kelly
It's true, Mom got married to Wild Bill. He died playing cards about 5 minutes later, so I think it should all work out.

I will say that South Dakota, while having a lot of flat dull land, has found ways to make up for it by having the best billboards. Ever since we entered the state we've seen sign after sign for Wall Drug, The Corn Palace, Reptile Museums, Crystal Caves, 1880s Town, and a dozen or so other small attractions that get most of their business from people following those signs. Wyoming so far hasn't had as many. Hopefully we will soon hit the rockies, and won't need any signs to keep us occupied on the trip.

Thursday, May 21

Kelly
Today was equally long, but less exhausting due to us spending more time outside of the car. We’ve discovered that all depressed river towns are similar, as both Sioux City and Sioux Falls reminded me of Manchester. After checking out the namesake falls, Mom and I stopped in Mitchell, which is the home of George McGovern, but more importantly is the home of the world-famous Corn Palace, a tourist trap that advertises from 100 miles away. It is a local rec center that is decorated entirely with corn and corncobs. It’s… well, it’s impressive. The corn is made into murals.

From there, we tested out the car’s long-range high-speed capability as we crossed hours of prarie land to get to Badlands National Park. It reminded me of Tatooine from Star Wars, or similar alien planet. Tonight we’re in the equally fun tourist trap town of Wall, home of Wall Drug, which, they claim, has signs for it in Kenya. Think South of the Border, but in the Dakotas.

Faye
We saw several dozen highway signs advertising the Corn Palace, my favorite being one about “Ear-chitecture.” Like corn mazes, an artist designs a new theme every year for the building, then it’s put together with ears of corn cut in half and glued on to the facade, with other grains and such filling in as needed. They do great work!

Throughout Illinois, Iowa and South Dakota we passed signs for numerous American landmarks. Even though we are not on a deadline, we decided we didn’t have time to see: Ronald Reagan’s college, Herbert Hoover’s homestead and museum, John Wayne’s birthplace, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home or souvenirs from “Dances With Wolves”. Most disappointing to Joe, I’m sure, is that we not only passed up “Reptile Gardens” with its very large collection, but also The Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, one of his favorite spots. Sorry Joe.

Wednesday, May 20th

Faye
We had (probably) our longest day on the road - 12 hours - 9 to 9. That includes meal and gas stops of course, and everything went well. Illinois and Iowa vary between flat farmland and rolling hilly farmland, which can be quite pretty, except that there's a lot of it.

We're spending the night in Sioux City, Iowa and enjoying a little of the Bushmill's Irish whiskey that Joe brought back from Ireland for Kelly. Kelly's been celebrating the end of each day on the road with a little Bushmill's. We learned 2 main things today. Iowa has wireless internet in their rest areas, and the state capitol building in Des Moines is a very large, very impressive building

Kelly
In addition, I have now crossed into my first new state (Iowa) and have added one more wine onto my 50-state wine checklist (Iowa makes 15!). Des Moines seems like a nice city, and yes, the capital building overwhelms everything else.


TUESDAY, MAY 19th
Kelly

Started off the day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Again I lamented the lack of people downtown, because the waterfront area is beautiful. And totally safe, really! Come back people! The Museum is great, you must go if you find yourself anywhere nearby. The sheer amount of stuff from different genres and decades means that everyone can geek out over something. Also, I can say pretty confidently that I am taller than Mick Jagger, but shorter than Keith Richards.

From the museum it was 5 hours, four more tolls, three rest stops, and one wrong turn to Midway Airport to pick up Mom. We had planned to eat dinner at the airport to wait out rush hour traffic, but were thwarted by the fact that Midway does not have any eateries outside of security. We experienced a bit of Chicago traffic (the end of my streak), and eventually made it to the home of the Morlans in Bloomington. They were all good sports in waiting up for us to have drinks and dessert. And the bed was never more welcoming than that night.


Faye

I left Manchester NH via Southwest Airlines and learned a helpful hint. If you want to get some plane seats to yourself, on a plane that's only 2/3 or so full, you go down toward the back and choose an aisle seat. Everyone who got on after me looked for an empty aisle seat, even if that meant sitting next to 2 other people. No one sat in the empty middle or window seat next to me! I don't think it was anything about me, but that's ok if it was. Anyway, Kelly met me and we worked our way through Chicago traffic and down to Bloomington IL. We had a very nice visit with Joyce, Larry & Clif Morlan and enjoyed their comfy guest beds.

Monday, May 18

Kelly
The day the trip really started. Jess and I bade farewell – her to go back to bed for a day of coughing and sniffling, me to points west. And my 33 hour streak of no traffic started, as downtown Philly is fairly empty of cars at 9am on a Monday. That doesn’t seem right to this city girl. From there I hopped onto the beginning of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and $20 later I left the very end. Sigh…

Anyway, between those two points I had my very first car problem as the transmission sensor, which had been threatening to die for the past several weeks, went for good. As I found out later, when the sensor dies, the car can’t tell how fast it’s going, and so it by default goes into second gear. This is really fun when your car is going 70 mph. I pulled off at the next exit (near Hershey) to find a mechanic right there. The mechanic was friendly and competent enough to both get me a new sensor and to pull out a rodents’ nest that had been built in the bowels of my car. He assured me that he saw that a lot in wooded areas, but this made me doubt the Hyundai dealers who never noticed it during their ‘thorough’ check-up of the car.

Several tolls and hours later, I made it to Cleveland, where I had enough hotel points for a room at the Doubletree downtown. While the hotel was nice, it would have been great to see Cleveland at night. It doesn’t seem that anyone does that, as that city follows the great Midwestern tradition of people not walking around their very nice, rebuilt downtown area any more than they have to.


The one exception to this – Minneapolis. Great downtown. Very busy, even in mid-January.

So, I consoled myself with a fluffy bathrobe and the season finale of Gossip Girl. Not a bad night.

Sunday, May 17

Kelly
After a late start to the day, the car and I were off – really on a trial run, 2 ½ hours down to Philadelphia. Once in central Philadelphia, I paid a small fortune in parking and went up to see the new Wharton grad, Jessica Tait. The Wharton apartments are very nice (as you would expect), not too far from Rittenhouse Square. Both of us were zonked from our respective celebratory weekends, and so our night out in Philly consisted of dinner down the block and a night of chatting with her roommate and watching Doctor Who, like the sci-fi fans we are.