Day 3

On day 3 (Tuesday), we drove from Rochester, Minnesota to Chicago. We crossed the Mississippi as we entered Wisconsin. I'm not used to such big rivers, so crossing the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers was pretty amazing.


Now, this next picture doesn't look like much, but when you look close, you will notice that it is the "welcome to Wisconsin" sign. Ted and I have a really hard time taking pictures of signs, so the fact that we got this sign somewhat in view was quite an accomplishment.


And, here's the "Welcome to Illinois" sign. Again, we were proud to just get it in the frame.



After these signs, we got to Chicago. I'm generally impressed with all types of skyscrapers, so Chicago was awesome. I knew it was a big city, but it was bigger than I expected.


We stayed at Ted's friends apartment was the Lincoln Park area just north of downtown Chicago. Ted's friend left a key in her mailbox for us, and we tried it out on the front door, but it didn't work. While Ted was trying to find out what was wrong, a guy came and asked Ted what the problem was (I was away moving the car). I guess we looked pretty suspicious. Luckily, the key worked on a door on the side.

The apartment was on a cool street, really close to downtown. Here's some pictures:


After arriving, we went to eat at a pizza place that was really good. They made "pizza pot pies." That means that it was really just like a pot pie full of pizza toppings, with cheese on the top. This picture is a little bright, but you can at least make out the outline of the pie.


We then went to Wrigley Field to a Cubs game. We were pretty excited to see the game, but everyone warned us that it was going to be cold. We didn't realize exactly how cold though. The wind was blowing so hard that it felt like we had our heads out the window in a car. It was freezing. Although we had on all the warm clothes we brought on the trip, it was pretty hard to sit in the cold. We made it through 6 innings before we decided to leave. Even with the cold, though, the game was fun and we especially enjoyed watching the fans around us.




After, we went back to the apartment and both slept on this couch.


So, that's all for today...so far, so good.

Day 2

Today, Monday, we planned on driving as far as we could toward Chicago, but we knew we wouldn't make it there because we wanted to see a lot more of South Dakota on our way. Ted found a road through the Black Hills that was part of the "Ten Best Drives" on some website, so we gave it a try. This drive took us through one of the prettiest areas I've ever seen. I honestly had no idea that South Dakota was so amazing. The place was called the Needles, and here are some pictures:



We got to one spot were we didn't even know where the car was supposed to go...it looked like a dead end, but then we saw a little opening and a tunnel for the car. Luckily, ShadowFax (the Protege) is small. I don't know how you could get a big car through that.




This picture is looking down at ShadowFax from a short hike into the Needles:



After we left the Needles and the Black Hills (in which we saw buffalo, but didn't get a good picture of them), we started toward Wall, SD. About an hour outside of the town, we saw a sign that said we were entering "Wall Drug Country," and we then saw signs for Wall drug every couple of minutes. Here is one sign we managed to take a picture of:


With these signs, we were curious what Wall Drug was all about. I happened to be a huge souvenir Mall, with other random things. It was there we found this awesome setup:


After Wall, we drove through Badlands National Park. This was pretty awesome, and again proved the coolness of SD. Badlands kind of looked like Bryce Canyon mixed with Canyonlands. We were on the Prairie, and then it just fell away to amazing formations.





After the Badlands, we went to the National Minutemen Missile Historical Site. While driving through SD, we would see random fenced in squares. Apparently, these were once silos holding minutemen nuclear missiles. From the 60s until the 90s, they had these submarine-like capsules buried 30 feet under ground, and the would lock 2 guys down there for 24 hour periods, so they could fire the missiles if necessary.

While this place was interesting, the most important part of this stop was it was at the convenience store next door where Ted and I got our Wolf t-shirts to remember SD.



The only bad thing about SD was after the Missile Historical Monument, there wasn't really anywhere to stop to eat for a long, long time. We passed exit after exit with no restaurant in sight. We got pretty hungry, and fruit leather and beef jerky can only hold you over for so long. Finally we found a Subway... it was really nice to eat a real meal.


The town where we stopped also had a sign that said "imaginary friends stay free." We got a kick out of it, and here's a picture, but I don't know if you can read the sign.


After leaving SD and entering Minnesota, I (Jon) experienced a coming of age experience: I got pulled over for the first time in my life. I was going 79 in a 70 mph zone, and found a cop behind us with the lights flashing. The good thing about it is that he only gave me a warning. So, just be aware that in Minnesota, they strictly enforce their speed limits.

We almost made it through Minnesota today, but decided to stop in Rochester, the home of the Mayo Clinic. Here's a picture of our Hampton Inn.

That's all for Monday...

Day 1 of the road trip

So, we started out our trip from Salt Lake to Washington, DC early this morning. Ted and I met in Bountiful, and were happy to find that we both brought a lot of the same snacks for the ride. Needless to say, we are packing a lot of beef jerky.

We started through Wyoming, and our first stop was an unexpected visit to Martin's Cove. We had no idea that it was on our way. Martin's Cove itself was more than a five mile hike, and with our time constraints, we didn't have that much time. So, we walked through the museum and talked to the senior missionaries stationed there. Here's a picture of the Sweetwater River close to the cove. We say the Oregon trail, and also Independence Rock nearby, and Ted let me know that the Pioneers had a dance on top of Ind Rock, which seemed kind of hard to do after seeing the rock.



After that, we drove trough Casper. We enjoyed a supreme pizza at Pizza Hut, and moved on through Wyoming and then into South Dakota. The first main attraction in SD was the carving in progress of Crazy Horse. We went to get a closer look, and found out that it was a $20 entrance fee. We couldn't turn down the guy at the gate, however, who turned out to be one of the many very amicable South Dakotans that we encountered. So, Ted and I paid the entrance fee, went to a museum, where a guy tried very hard to get us to watch a movie we didn't have time to watch. Although this guy was also incredibly nice, we finally convinced him we didn't have time. That means we spent $20 for about 10 minutes of time with Crazy Horse. The nice thing is all entrance fees go toward completing the carving (which they have been in the process of making for over 60 years). We have a picture of this, but it is on Ted's camera which stopped working, so we'll try to get one later.

The next stop was MOUNT RUSHMORE!!! Mount Rushmore and its surroundings is incredibly beautiful. Ted and I both agree that the whole area could be a National Park. The Black Hills are amazing. While Mt. Rushmore was really cool, it was a little smaller than I expected. Here are some pictures:

Ted and I got a kick of the many signs on a short path around Mt. Rushmore that warned us that it was a "strenuous trail" or "hazardous trail". The thing is, the whole path was an elevated wood walkway, complete with handrails, and was at the most a mile long round trip. See the picture below with one of these signs and Ted in the background having to take a rest on the sturdy handrail from the strenuous and hazardous hike.


We also saw a lot of wildlife on the trip, especially around Mt. Rushmore.

And, just trying to follow Ted's extensive documentation of his hotels in Spain, here's a picture of our Holiday Inn Express in Hill City, SD:

One last interesting thought...when we asked our hotel where we should go for dinner, they suggested the "Bumpin Buffalo Bar." We decided against it.