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...