Since i didn’t have free wifi on the last few stops of the trip i haven’t gotten details about the last few days out. I’m working on getting the pics up. and getting the details figured out. Its been a busy 2 weeks. We Moved to a new apartment and haven’t gotten our internet worked out (except for a near by wireless that isn’t secure… hehe silly people). More to come…
Details are Coming…..
Giggy.
So today we woke up bright and early and got moving by 9am. thats right, 9.
Mount Rushmore (Daylight)
It was misty this morning when we got back to the momument. We took the walking tour around the base of the heads on the “Presidential Trail. We took a ton of pictures and only slightly got sucked into the Giftshop for some BS.
Link to Mount Rushmore Pics (Day 4)
The Devil’s Tower
If you’ve seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you’ve seen The Devil’s Tower. (big flat mountain where aliens met and greet). There was a group of climbers on it, they are visible in some of the pictures and they are crazy as hell to climb it.
Link to Devil’s Tower Pics
A Mystery Mountain Range
Between US-90 West in Wyoming and Cody, Wyoming. I’m not sure exactly what range it is although i guess i could goog it. I’m just doing a simple blog tonight. We took tons of pics of this and i’ve got to skim through them before posting.
Total Miles Sofar: ~2150 miles
Today we drove a lot. we did about 675 miles today through Minnesota and South Dakota. We made 1 stop before rushmore and our hotel.
The One and Only “CORN PALACE” in Mitchel, SD. Located near exit 332 on I-90 through South Dakota, it has been standing in some form or another since 1892.
Pics of the Corn Palace
We made it to Mount Rushmore about 9pm and caught the nightly show. A historical recording read by Avery Brooks (AKA Captain Sisko from DS-9).
Pics of Rushmore lite up at night.
I got a ton of general SD/Minnesota Pics including some neat sunsets and black hills shots. Too many to sort through tonight though. Its almost 11pm local time (Mountain Time Zone). Next timezone is Pacific so almost to the west coast.
Tomorrow’s Goal is to check out rushmore during the day, head to Yellowstone and check that out before nightfall. might not make it to yellowstone at all, We’ve got some decisions to make. Amy’s got to make an appointment for a job interview sometime next week and we can trim a day off if we head south from here and skip yellowstone. Anyway, More tomorrow.
Later,
John.
Total Miles today: ~672
Total Miles sofar: ~1711
Today, we did a good bit of driving in a lot of traffic. Chicago is a mess with traffic.
Sites:
Notre Dame, South Bend, IN.
We had a bit of a mess up when we went to visit Notre Dame. We got off the highway at the right exit, but that was about the last thing we did right. We couldn’t find the visitor center/parking and pulled up to a security checkpoint. The guard was nice and let us into the secured part of campus so we could loop around without backing up the street. This was actually kinda cool since we got to see some of the buildings that we later walked over too. Once we found the parking lot we could park in legally things went fine. We walked around for about 1/2 an hour and got some decent pics. I still can’t get the pics of the little camera we have but the big camera is cool, so those are what are on flickr. When we were ready to leave we got spun around and ended up going the wrong direction out of town and got back on the highway 10 miles east of South Bend, which was quite a loop. All in all it was a nice stop off, the campus is beautiful.
The Sears Tower, Chicago, IL.
This was easier to find than you’d think. Ok, its 110 stories tall, so its not hard to spot, but i figured it would be kinda interesting to drive through downtown chicago and actually find it and park nearish to it. Traffic was horrible, but other than slow and a little psycho, we got to the tower in one piece. Waited in line a bit, Dropped out ~12.50$ per person and got in line. We had one bit of excitment when a complete asshole wanted to jump line and the pseudo security guy had to talk to him. I thought the security guy was going to kick the line jumpers ass. We didn’t see the jumper at the top of the tower when we got up there, so maybe he did. During the elevator ride to the 103 floor, a rip of AFLAC duck sounding alot like but not entirely like gilbert godfrey gave us a little history lesson on the tower as we rocketed up the tower. Once we got to the top, (and pop’d our ears) we got a really nice view of Chicago and Lake Michigan. We got some good pics, grabbed some lunch and began our trek out of chicago. Traffic outbound from chicago was as bad as inbound. It was definitely worth the stop, but if i was driving across the US and didn’t care about the sears tower, I’d head south and miss chicago altogether.
Illinois and Wisconsin
Just driving through them the vistas did improve as we went. We saw lots of farm lands and low rolling hills. At about mile marker 40 on I-90 West, we started seeing alot more hills and some neat rock structures.
Pics to Come, but need to parse through and clear out the crappy ones.
We stopped for the night in La Cross, Wisconsin; which is located right at the Mississippi River. We are staying at the Holiday Inn on Pearl Street. Got a shitty room, King size but its a smoking room so it smells bad. “Haggled” the price down a bi, so woohoo. Anyway, Colbert is on at 10pm (crazy central Timezone…) I’m going to add the links to the sets as soon as i get them into flickr.
Later:
John.
Stats to follow tomorrow. I’ve lost track of some of the info.
Miles Driven: a ton
Hours Driven: too many.
Well, Day 1 of the drive is complete. We’ve made it through PA and Ohio. I’ve got lots of good pics from the drive sofar, but no USB cable to get them from the camera. I think one is in the car, but i’m not in the mood to go get it. It’s late and we’ve had a long day.
Travel Summary:
Miles Traveled: 526 miles (846.5 K)
Hours driven: 9:45
More Soon.
John.
BTW, Currently in Indiana at a Holiday Inn Express of Exit 144.
