Driving off into the sunset - while raining, South Dakota
We ended up staying overnight in Dani's apartment - nicer futon, and later waking up! Though we weren't originally planning to, it seemed wrong to be 15min away from the Mall of America (largest mall in America) and not go. I also found out that Target headquarters is in Minneapolis, where they have a 3 story store downtown. If it weren't for the snow, I think Minneapolis might be my heaven.
9am - I woke up and started getting ready. We had cereal, yogurt, and really good tea (Lady Grey) for breakfast.
10am - Finally got out the door; Dani drove as she was our Minneapolis tour guide for the day. I was super excited to find out she's a Prius owner! We headed to the Mall of America first. We were immediately amazed by the mall directory, which is 4 sides - each side with different categories of shops. Walking farther into the mall, we came to the center which is a huge indoor amusement park. There are at least 4 roller coasters and a dozen or so other rides - all INDOORS. [pictures coming soon]
Next to the amusement park is a Legoland store with huge statues built from Legos. It was mandatory to go into this store. They had some prebuilt Lego buildings that cost upwards of $100. They also had packs of "vintage" Lego-men, which I remember having when I was a kid. Are our toys really vintage?? [pictures coming soon]
Next, we headed to the in-mall aquarium. While we didn't have time to go through it, we did need a picture of the world's largest [something], and this was the world's largest underwater aquarium (see "25. World's largest").
It was about 11:30am at this point, and we really needed to head out since we had a looong drive to South Dakota (and needed to check in by 10pm). So of course, we debated riding one of the roller coasters (finally decided no time), and also decided to go to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The sculpture garden was pretty, and reminded me a little bit like Grounds for Sculpture in NJ (though not as big as ours I think). The main feature is a huge bent spoon with a cherry spewing water into a large pond. By now, Lucas was done with his morning orientation activities, so we headed out to meet him for lunch. [pictures coming soon]
12:15pm - Already past the time we should have left, we met up for lunch in "Dinkytown" - UMN's downtown - at Potbelly's. We ate pretty quickly, said bye to Lucas and Dani and headed out on the road.
1:30pm - Headed off to South Dakota. We were 1.5hrs late already, though luckily, we would be crossing through to Mountain time and would then be only 30min late. Along the way, the landscape really started to change. TONS of farms for miles and miles and the terrain was getting flatter. Even more annoying was that random parts of RT60 were completely closed for road construction. Lacking the extensive road network we're used to in Jersey, this meant detours that were miles and miles out of the way. We even had to detour onto the original detour a second time to get around a 2nd road closing. This was all before even entering South Dakota. The other nice thing about the midwest terrain, is its conduciveness to wind turbines, which we saw many of along the horizon.
6:30pm - To make the drive more interesting, SD makes up for cornfields with tons of billboards for the same thing. They work though - this is how we ended up at the Corn Palace (world's only!) in Mitchell, SD. We figured this would be an ok stop considering we needed to get gas and dinner, and the corn palace had free admission. For those who don't know, the corn palace is the world's only palace made of corn. Structurally, it is normal, but the exterior and some of the interior, is made completely of corn. Every year, they rebuild the exterior to a new theme. You can find out more at www.cornpalace.com. While we wanted to get gas, we were put off by the non-branded gas stations and the cheaper "unleaded plus". Later, we found out this just meant 10% ethanol added - which is the norm in NJ. We stopped at a Country Fair grocery store to get breakfast food. This meant we had to stop later down the road at a gas station to fill up and get quick dinner food. We ended up getting personal pizzas and eating in the car.
10:45pm CT/9:45pm Mountain - Time change! Though we were worried, a few miles out of Murdo, SD, the time changed giving us extra time to get to the Badlands Ranch and Resort.
10pm - We finally get to the Badlands National Park. It was pitch black and my headlights cast huge shadows over the geologic peaks that sandwiched the winding road we were on. It was incredibly scary to drive through - I don't think you could have paid me to stop the car and get out. Needless to say, we were both pretty excited for tomorrow when we could see these in daylight. Our campground was farther than we thought and was down a long dirt road. The manager had closed the office but ended up seeing our carlights as he was playing his xbox in his motor home next door. He showed us to our camp site and we set up the tent and air mattress. Both were awesome - good buys. Unfortunately, we had no idea where the bathrooms were - that wasn't fun.
Thanks to Dani and Lucas for our time in Minneapolis!
Distance Traveled: 544mi
Total Distance Traveled: 1935mi
$ Spent: $120.23
Total $ Spent: $394.66
6:30am - Amy wakes up and decides to explore our campsite. It's absolutely beautiful during the daytime, and she gets some great shots of the flowers and animals in the area.
