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| Road Trip 2004 - links to images and words on the road to see Rush:
Thursday July 8, 2004 Bear Country USA - on the way to Mt Rushmore
Wall Drug, America's Midwest tourist stop. Giant dinosaurs, free ice water and jackelopes.
This place is HUGE - we spent a few hours wandering.
Badlands National Monument
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Thursday July 8, 2004 This was another long driving day – we traveled from Rapid City to Sioux Falls. Along the way we saw Bear Country USA, a drive-through animal park where the animals are free to roam (right up to your car door if you aren't paying attention!). We saw elk, reindeer, wolves, coyotes, foxes, mountain goats, bison and black, brown and grizzly bears. At the end of the drive there is a gift shop (surprise, surprise) and an animal compound with the smaller critters. There were housed bear cubs (just 5 months old), and badgers, red tailed foxes and even a Canadian Lynx. On the way out of the parking lot we saw a large peacock wandering about. We left and pressed on to Wall Drug, the giant tourist trap and Gateway to The West. This place is enormous, taking up at least 2 city blocks. The original draw was free ice water, which is still available to this day. If you are looking to buy anything touristy, it can be found at Wall Drug. They even have the famed Jackalope, a cross between a jackrabbit and antelope. We spent about an hour too long here, and hit the road with the weather threatening as we headed towards the Badlands loop drive. The Badlands are a fantastically colored moonscape. I can only imagine what sinking thoughts the first person to ride through them on horseback must have been thinking: "Wow dude, this really sucks. It looks cool, but there is no good way to negotiate these canyons!" We made a couple of picture stops then pressed on to Mitchell, SD. The plan was to see the Mitchell Corn Palace, but we got there at 9:30 at night and still needed to make Sioux Falls where we had hotel room reservations waiting. This was a really long drive, and when we rolled into the Baymont Inn (through 10 miles of construction!) everyone was tired and ready to sleep. Mike Kathy and Matt were going to drive back to Wheaton, IL on Friday and as they wanted to get a very early start we said our goodbyes before dropping into bed.
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