Travel Update Aug 14

August 11, 2011

After visiting our friends in Grand Rapids we headed out early this morning going  west.  We made a stop at Walcott, IA to visit the Truck Museum at the I-80 Truck stop.  It is the largest truck stop in the world.  The Museum was pretty interesting.  It consisted of a collection, belonging to Bill Moon, of mostly antique trucks along with a history of trucking.  After about an hour we went over to the truck stop to check it out for overnight.   The place was way too busy for our liking so we decided to move on.  The huge store is a trucker’s candy shop!

After another hundred miles, we ended up at a WalMart in Newton, IA and are currently parked there.  They requested we park at the southern end of the lot.  They are open 24 hours and have lot security.

So we covered about 450 miles, averaging just shy of 10 mpg.  Another reason to hate Illinois, had to fill at $3.69/gal, 20¢ per gal over Michigan and +35¢ higher than Iowa.  Kind of weird in Walcott, 89 octane at BP sold 10 cents below 87 octane.  Probably loaded with EtOH courtesy of the farmers.  The truck tended to drop 2 gears in the rolling hills, so I went to manual and managed to pull most in 6^th at 60 mph.

Tomorrow, Sioux Falls, SD, or further, maybe.  We expect to make the Badlands on Saturday.  All for now.

Friday, August 12, 2011

We’re in Mitchell, SD at a WalMart tonight.  Looks like a campground, so many RVs parked in here!  Into a strong headwind most of today, ran in 5^th most of the way at 8 mpg.  Our route took us through much of the flooded areas around Sioux City.  What a shame, there still is lots of water over roads, fields, yards, and up on houses.  I-29 is closed south of Sioux City as it’s really bad down river from there.  Hey where’s CNN and the “celebrities”, I guess  it isn’t New Orleans?

We stopped at the Corn Palace once we got here.  Pretty cool, only one in the world.  They use 3,000 bushels of rye, oat heads, and sour dock, plus 275,000 ears of corn to decorate the face and side of the building every year.  They use several different colors of corn grown in isolated fields to keep the color pure. Work starts with a template developed by artists, kind of a paint by number thing only using corn.  The template is put up and workers trim the ears and nail them in place.  The process takes about 2 months.  The first picture is the fron of the Palace, the second is a close up of the left mural showing the actual ears of corn used.

Tomorrow we head for the Badlands.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

We arrived in Interior, SD which is in the Badlands.  We went to a Minuteman Missile launch control and silo.  It has been decommissioned since 1993.  There were hundreds of Minuteman II’s in silos all over the Great Plains to provide response to a Soviet nuclear attach.  Each of these babies had over twice the destructive power as the bombs dropped in Japan.  Such a war would have obviously destroyed the world.  Today we went down into the launch room for the command wing that controlled 150 of these things.  Also saw a remaining silo with a disarmed Minuteman II in it.  Growing up during the cold war as many reading this did, we found it pretty interesting.

Also made a stop in Wall, SD home of Wall Drug.  The store opened in 1931, offering free water in an effort to get people to stop between the Badlands and Rapid City.  It now covers a good city block and is a destination, not just a stop! 

Seems like Wall, SD would make a good place for a “Wall”-Mart, however I’m sure the Drugstore would put a kibosh to it.

Campground here is OK, but not very high on the nice place list.  They are supposed to have WiFi, so we will check into it tomorrow.

Sunday August 14, 2011

Spent the day driving and hiking around the Badlands.  As you see in these pictures, its pretty rough countryside.  These buttes and spires are from water erosion, and have been in the making for about the past 60 million years.  The different colors represent different periods of time.

Spent some time watching the prairie dogs.  They remind me of a cross between squirrels and rabbits, the way they eat and run around.  They are on every predators menu.  Lynn had one actually get almost close enough to take some grass from her.

Tomorrow we leave for Keystone to see Mt Rushmore.  Stay tuned!