Mount Rushmore and More

Tonight we're staying in Keystone, SD, the nearest town to Mount Rushmore. Yes, we saw the monument. We saw it from the road where we drove by slowly (we did NOT park...as the signs told us not to do) and took pictures. There was no way in hell we were going to spend $10 to park just to take some pictures! It doesn't cost to SEE it, just to stop the car between two wite lines! And we got plenty of acceptable pictures, although I wanted to take one that looked like I was picking one of their noses, but life goes on, right?

Ta Da

As I said, we're staying in Keystone tonight. It's a tiny little town that's completely touristy. Evidently it gets really crowded in the summer time. We went to every single restaurant in town looking for something to eat. There's a place called the Ruby House that's set up like an old fashioned saloon...sort of. The tables reminded us of ones in a casino buffet and it REEKED of cigarettes. We sat down, ordered drinks and then left because we were both about to choke from the smoke smell.

After making the rounds in town, looking at menus, we ended up at the first restaurant we checked out, closest to our hotel. The food wasn't bad. Not fabulous either. The lady claimed the vegetables weren't frozen. I beg to differ. We got a bottle of wine...from California, of course. It seems people drink nothing else. It's been at every single restaurant we've been to that served it. Even when the area produces wine. I haven't seen a local wine in a restaurant yet. But I've also noticed that most other places have either fruit wines or generic table wines. No one has the variety of California.

We've been through a few other states since I posted last. Wisconsin was nice. We made one stop at a cheese shop where we got a bunch of cheese (small pieces), a magnet and a bottle of local wine and drove through the rest of it. It was a pretty state, not a lot of big cities and lots of grass. We also drove through Minnesota, which was mostly pretty too. We passed the Mall of America in Minneapolis and stayed the night in St. Cloud. The Holiday Inn (which we booked by mistake, we've been staying in Holiday Inn Expresses...there's a difference. Free breakfast for one) was HUGE! It had two indoor pools, one had a water slide, it had video games, volleyball and basketball courts, table tennis...all sorts of stuff. It was crazy! We got coffee at Barnes and Noble the next morning and Jim got a book at Petsmart about Bearded Dragons and we drove our second 8 hour day in a row.

Our first eight hour day of driving (on this stretch of the trip) was from Freeport, IL to St. Cloud. Freeport was a little sketchy. Our hotel was probably built in the 70s and PINK even though the outside looked a lot newer. There was NOWHERE to eat that wasn't creepy looking except this Italian place near the hotel. I ordered a fish dish, hoping to be a little healthy. It was awful! I ate my salad, baked potato and some of the appetizer we ordered.

From St. Cloud, we drove another almost eight hours to Mitchell, SD. It was an awful trip. It was so windy Jim was barely able to keep the car on the road and there were high wind warnings in the area until late in the evening. Nothing went wrong, thank goodness, but it was what my dad would call "Sporty" driving. I read my book (Susan Wiggs' Summer Hideaway. It's so good!) to keep my mind off the wind because it freaks me out! We ate at a place called Whiskey Creek Wood Fire Grill, and it was pretty good. We had seen Culvers all over the place, and decided to try their frozen custard since it was within walking distance of the hotel. It wasn't bad. Really creamy, but I've had my taste and I don't need any more.

Today we drove from Mitchell to Keystone, which was about a five, amost six hour drive. It was raining like crazy when we left, but it subsided pretty quickly and left us with cloudy, but dry weather (no wind). We made a few stops along the way. There were about a million billboards for about 300 miles before a place called Wall Drug. For the longest time we had no idea what it was until I looked it up. It ended up being a drug store turned tourst attraction. They had EVERYTHING in there. Souvenirs, a cafe, ice cream, a donut factory, books, clothes, candy, photos of about a million people, places and things. A giant T-Rex that tried to eat Jim and lots of photo opportunities. We spent probably 45 minutes just walkin through looking at stuff.

Two of the probably 20 signs just before the exit for Wall Drug

Me and my Jackelope

Jim driving the covered wagon

In the wagon

Jim and the T-Rex

Next we stopped at Reptile Gardens, which was sort of like Reptiland in Pennsylvania, only bigger and with many more animals. They had birds and turtles and a 15 foot alligator and a bunch of smaller ones. There were snakes of all kinds and all sorts f lizards. My favorite was the prairie dogs. The picture below looks stretched, but it's not. He's just that fat!!

There was also a cool chicken, but I felt sorry for her because she was in this little box and was expected to answer questions when people put in a quarter. She'd even laid an egg in there.

Ok, I think that pretty much gets you up to speed. The weather predicts snow here tonight, so hopefully it's not too much. There are tornado warnings for Nebraska. We're going there tomorrow but not where the warnings are...on the other side of the state from that.