I Can't Even Think Of A Title!

I knew this day would happen. We had a 7 hour drive from Sioux Falls to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It rained on and off the whole time. The road was straight and flat and the speed limit dropped to 65 mph. We saw mostly endless fields of corn sprinkled with wind turbines. There was nothing worth stopping for other than gas and bathrooms. And, I didn't take a single photo for the entire day. To add to the fun, when we pulled into Cedar Rapids, we knew pretty much right away that it wasn't going to be in our top 25 small towns of the trip. The downtown area that we were directed to was pretty much deserted  and there was nowhere that looked like somewhere you'd like to walk through. So, we drove to the next little town, called Marion, and found Granite City Brewery which at least had a bunch of cars in the lot. It turned out that this was the highlight of our day. The beer was good and we ordered a couple of sandwiches that we shared. 
We had a prime rib sandwich with caramelized onions and jack cheese. And the other was called Overlake for some reason. It had smoked turkey and bacon, cheese, aioli and some veggies. 

I can't only have two pictures so I've picked a few that I've not had room for or forgotten to put into earlier posts. 
On our second night with the bikers in Hill City, there was a deluge. We wondered what bikers do in rain storms and I looked out our window to see these scenes.

These are a few more shots from the badlands yesterday. It really was a memorable place. 

We were driving along the road in the badlands when we saw some large birds up on a cliff. We thought that they were vultures but when I walked back to check, I saw that they were wild turkeys. I had no idea that turkeys could live in that kind of environment. 

The oddest thing that happened was that they all took off and flew across the road. I've never seen a turkey fly and managed to catch one in the process. Not too graceful. 

And finally, here's another one of the small tunnels that we drove through on the Needles Highway the previous day. There was less than a foot clearance on each side of the RAV.

Tomorrow, we will be in Indianapolis which I'm sure will offer more photo ops!

Saturday Night In Sioux Falls

We weren't sure what Sioux Falls was going to be like but it's turned out to be great! Sioux Falls is the largest city in South Dakota and we have a place that is right downtown. As a bonus, our room is on the concierge floor which means you have to use your key to make the elevator go to the floor. And there's a separate lounge area. No free drinks though. Still, quite fancy compared to other places we've been in the last month. More on Sioux Falls later. 

Today was supposed to be a basic 6 hour drive in a relatively straight line. But, we seem to always turn that kind of drive into a 9 or 10 hour drive because we stop and look at things. Our first unscheduled stop today was at a little town called Wall. No idea why it has that name. Since we entered S. Dakota, we've been seeing signs for Wall Drug. At first I thought it was the town name. As we got closer, there were endless signs about all the stuff you could buy, do and eat in Wall Drug. It turned out to be a giant store with numerous buildings that sold just about everything and covered most of the town's main street. Basically, it's a giant tourist trap and we were in it! We wandered around and only bought coffee and tea but it was quite an interesting place. The original store was built in 1931 and it's grown ever since.

There are stuffed animals and guns everywhere. 

Even the pharmacy has stuffed animals!

There are lots of real guns but you can also get toy guns for the kids!

They even have a chapel in case you need to pray or want to get married!

And, of course there are lots of places to eat. The Soda Fountain wasn't open yet but the main restaurant was serving massive breakfasts to hoards of hungry bikers. Oh, my coffee was only 19 cents!

This is the outside. Everything you see to the end of the street is Wall Drug!

That was maybe a half hour added to the trip. Next we decided to take the scenic byway that runs through Badlands National Park. I was a little skeptical at the start as we were in a heavy fog but the lady at the gate said it would get better and it did. First, we stopped so Marilyn could take a nice portrait of this big horn sheep. We saw more and they were all females like this one. Not sure where the males were hanging out. 

The road through the park was another long and winding affair that was fun to drive. At every turn there were new things to see and we stopped at almost every available place. The badlands looked similar to the ones we saw in Alberta, but the colours were different. 

We saw this sign at the beginning and I really tried to find snakes, much to Marilyn's chagrin, but had no luck.

Towards the end of the road, we saw a small herd of bighorn sheep.

The bikers also decided to visit the badlands. It was really interesting to sort of spend  a few days with a bunch of bikers. We got to see them as bikers and also as ordinary people like us. New perspectives are always enlightening.

So, that was another couple of hours that we really enjoyed added to the trip. It all adds up!
Now, on to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. As I said at the top, we never know what a new place will be like. Our hotel was a couple of minutes from Phillip Street which is the main street for restaurants and shops. The shops were mostly closed because it was after 6, but the restaurants were open. There was also a sculpture walk going on. Local artists did sculptures and they were located along the street. We strolled up and down the street looking at restaurants, closed shops and the statues. 

 At the end of the street we found a restaurant called Bros Brasserie Americano. It was excellent! I'd say it's in the top 3 of all the places we've visited. 

Marilyn's dinner was a smoked salmon salad which she loved. The salmon was hot smoked and had a great flavour.

I had a hanger steak that was first cooked sous vide (sealed in plastic, cooked very slowly in a water bath) then grilled. It was very tender with great flavour. 

Here are a couple more interesting sculptures that we saw on the way back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, we'll be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa after about a 6 hour drive. I don't think there's much between here and there that we will explore so we might have more time to check out the town. Of course, it's Sunday so there might not be a lot open but we'll see. 

Beating The Crowds

We were looking at the weather last night as we listened to the sweet sound of Harleys and it didn't look good. A storm system was moving in and there would be thunderstorms by late morning and then rain for the foreseeable future. Based on the that and the crowds we saw yesterday, we figured an early start was best. We planned on visiting Mount Rushmore when it opened at 7 and then scooting over to the Crazy Horse Memorial after that. After making it to Mount Rushmore by 7:04, we chose one of the many hundreds of empty park spots and walked up to the mountain. As it turned out we were the second set of people there and the cleaners hadn't even finished their work!

As you can see, it was overcast when we got there but the sun was just starting to peak through some gaps in the clouds. We looked around and waited. In about 10 minutes, the sun did break through and we had some nice blue sky as a background.

And here's a closeup of the guys. Roosevelt is a bit in shadow but we didn't want to wait around too long!

We left the still empty parking lot and started off towards Crazy Horse but came across this mountain goat. There was a baby one up higher that was making a lot of noise but we only had a few seconds to take a quick picture. 

When we arrived at the Crazy Horse Memorial, the parking lot was also pretty much empty. My new theory is that bikers don't like to get up early. This is an incredible place and the story behind it is really amazing. Briefly, the first nations people of the Black Hills saw the success of Mount Rushmore and wanted to show the world that they also had heroes. They asked a Polish immigrant sculptor to carve a mountain statue of one of their most revered leaders, Crazy Horse. It was started in 1948 and is still far from finished. There is no projected date to complete the project and some native leaders have voiced opposition to it. In any case, it is a massive statue and will be the biggest in the world when completed. 

As a size comparison, the 4 heads of Mount Rushmore would fit inside the head section of the Crazy Horse statue. You can see the white outline of the horse's head on the rock. They use explosives to do rough shaping then use other tools to smooth it out. 

This is what the completed statue will look like.

It still wasn't even slightly looking like rain so we headed off to Custer State Park where there was a 14 mile scenic route called Needles Drive. It's a very winding and steep road that goes through some very small tunnels and passes by some needle-like  rock formations. This was our third activity of the day before 10:00 but we didn't want to waste any time if it was going to rain. 

This is the Eye of the Needle rock formation.

This is the local version of a chipmunk. We saw a bunch of them when looking at the rocks.

Since the weather was still good, we drove to a small town called Custer. Not surprisingly, it was full of bikers too. We seemed to be fitting in quite well so we wandered around and looked in some stores. The interesting, or maybe odd thing about this town was that they had speakers all over the main street. And they were playing all country, all the time! At one point, they also had a live broadcast of a country radio station. And they had decorated buffalo all over town. These reminded us of the moose that were in Toronto some years ago. 

Had to include this. The store above was full of stuffed animals, antlers, horns and fur things. A little bizarre for us but it seemed normal for the locals.

Again, lots of interesting restored buildings. 

Our next adventure was planned in case it was raining, but it wasn't. We decided to visit Jewel Caves anyway. It's the 3rd largest cave system in the world at 167 miles of tunnels. We had an hour and a half tour that took us down almost 400 feet through a series of caves. 

After all of that, we were a bit wiped out so went back to our hotel for a while before taking another walk in Hill City to see how the bikers were doing. They seemed to be just hanging out and showing off their bikes. From what we read, there were other major activities going on in the main city, Sturgis. But, a lot of people chose to stay here. Apparently, they come back year after year.

After the promised rain storm finally arrived, we were able to get out to Desperados, a local cowboy restaurant. I had ribs last night and had no intention of having them again,  but they had buffalo ribs! I won't be eating much tomorrow. And Marilyn had a really good walleye or pickerel. She was also very full. We were glad that we just had a small snack for lunch!