Comfort Inn Sioux City

Happy birthday Nick! 25 years young. Unfortunately on his birthday we had to drive 10 hours. We left at 11am to Warrensburg, MO to deliver our bunnies, Maggie and Sam to Kristin. She is a nice girl who responded to my craiglist ad to foster our bunnies. She has ...

... De Soto found it way back when. We had lunch in an original ice cream parlour that had the original decor and fittings dating back to the 1800's. Hot dog was great, the coffe we sniffed then left on the table. We then made our way to Sioux City, Iowa after a few stops at Webster and Rockwell where ther was a threat of a possible twister. No such luck. We had a drink in the bar and started to bond with some English sisters. We laughed SO much.

We started the day with a journey through the Black Hills via a winding road through Spearfish Canyon on our way to Mount Rushmore. On the way, we passed through Lead, SD, where the Homestake Mining Company found the largest single vein of gold in North America. Just before Mt. Rushmore, a tourist village sprang up. But we thoroughly enjoyed our visit at Mt. Rushmore and then we fired up the RV and ...

... between Rapid City and Sioux Falls SD is like driving around Ritzville for 5 hours at 80 miles an hour. On the iPod: Not much of anything today...not sure why that is. Compensation for an oops: Bob got his photo take in front of a fake Mt. Rushmore at Wall Drug.

Have any of you been to the Mall of America? Well, we stopped there for lunch today. I was so excited to experience the materialism of America. You know, I walked around that thing for 2 hours. It is just a mall, only bigger. Yeah, they had some neat stores, but it was just a mall. And yeah, they did have a roller coaster in the center, but I wasn't about to get on that thing with all the screaming kiddies. So needless to ...

... Park and a lunch stop. Before hitting I-90, we stopped at Minuteman Missile NHS, a national park site that preserves a nuclear missile silo site. There are no more active Minuteman silos in SD (they were dismantled pursuant to START) and we weren't in time for a tour, but the small interpretive center was pretty neat. Keep it in mind when visiting the Black Hills area. Abby then settled in for a good long snooze and we powered through a couple hundred miles of ...

... left after an excellent zoo trip - way better than anything I've seen before. We nearly didn't go in as there were approx 2 million kids there, school buses, moms with strollers - the lot. Seems like it was a special day whereby loads of schools etc came to this zoo. We thought it would be packed but the place was HUGE. It had everything - giraffe, apes, lions, tigers, pumas, elephants, sea-lions, a monkey island, everything ...

... Christmas party!). Last night I went to see the Lights Festival at Old Market. I hope you can see the beauty of the lights in my photos - I am not a skilled photographer so I don't do the scenes any justice. Tomorrow I am off to Washington D.C. before getting the train to Richmond, Virginia to stay with a good friend - Carol-lee Aquiline and her son, Aeden. I am looking forward to seeing them again. Hope you all are well and I wish you all a very merry Christmas. Leonie

We're in Nebraska!! A new state for both Allison and I! We have been asking ourselves, "Why has nobody ever mentioned how cool Nebraska is??" It's beautiful! But, first, we spent most of the day in South Dakota.
We got up in Wall, saw our two neighbors, gave a sheepish smile, packed up and left. We went to the crazy Wall Drug shopping metropolis. Nobody go there. I'm sure Allison's dad would say it stinks. It was packed by the time we got there. One neat thing was that ...

We started the two-day trek home today. We're taking two days to save us from a single-day twelve or thirteen hour drive home, but it also let us check out a couple of other things along the way. First stop was Wall, SD. This town is known for its drug store, appropriately named Wall Drug. It has been there since 1931 and made a name for itself by offering free water to travelers beginning back in 1936. Since then ...