Yellowstone Road Trip...Day 2

We'll make Day 2 short and sweet as I feel wasted and wan.

We spent the night in Iowa and jumped right into Minnesota.  It was......uh.....boring.

I remember looking at the signs along the road that suggest someone adopt a section of the highway.  You know, the Kiwanis, sports teams, soccer moms, podiatrists.  Just about anyone can do it.  My first thought was "You need people to have litter!"  There was one plastic bag flapping on a fence.  

This is who lives in Minnesota.

I swear to God there were no houses, no roads, nothing.  These cattle are alone!  Call the SPCA!

Now this could have been South Dakota.  It doesn't matter.

We could have stopped to see the 8 foot Jolly Green Giant, but we just kept right on going.

Rumor has it there was a 60 ton prairie dog.  I must have been looking at some road kill.

We couldn't stop.  Grizzly has us on a schedule.

The only way I knew we were in South Dakota was that the speed limit went from 70 mph to 75 mph.  That is one of those good/bad things.  Good because we could haul ass.  Bad because it meant that the road was as flat as my chest in junior high.

Grizzly did let us stop in Mitchell, South Dakota to see the Corn Palace.

The entire front of this building is covered in corn products.  Everything you see in this picture is corn.  Right in the middle of town.  It is Mitchell's claim to fame. 

I saw the Corn Palace 50 years ago when my parents took me to Yellowstone National Park.  Do I really need to make age jokes?  Yes, the corn has been replaced.  No there weren't any squirrels chewing on it.

I forced Grizzly to pose with the giant corn cob.

He's the one on the left.

I posed with Injun Joe.  He was missing his thumb.

Maybe the squirrels got him.




If you've never been out west, you may not know about Wall Drug in South Dakota.

The signs advertising it start in Iowa or Delaware, I'm not sure.  You drive for hundreds of miles, reading the Wall Drug signs.  There's nothing else to look at, so you almost want to go there.

You have nothing else to live for at this point.

This is outside Wall Drug.

I don't have the words for this either.

My theory is that since there is nothing along Route 90 other than dirt and cattle, the locals have to come up with some kind of business.

Here it is.

There's also a reptile gardens featuring alligators and other tropical reptiles that I am pretty sure never lived in this part of the country. 

Why, why, why would I want to see an alligator in South Dakota?  Maybe if I was in Florida, but South Dakota?  We passed.

By the end of the day, I believe it was Wyoming, we drove into a thunderstorm.

I'm no scientist, but we're out in the open, at a higher elevation and wouldn't that mean that the lightening doesn't have to go as far to get us?

We survived.

We're eating pizza somewhere in Wyoming.

The best part is that we're only driving 4 or 5 hours tomorrow.  We're going to Bozeman, Montana, to hang out for a few hours and spend the night.

For now, good night.  The adventure continues.