Residence Inn By Marriott Sioux Falls

... with 2 cappuccinos worst coffee so far. Its interesting the cost of Macca’s compared to the diners.

Then we went to Madison a beautiful university town on the lake. Full of students hurrying to attend lectures bikes, mopeds, pedestrians everywhere. Looks like a great town to go to college very picturesque.

We got a little bit lost getting out of Madison and ended up on a back road thru some small farms. We around a ...

... were to meet next day to look at the Big Sioux River falls. Planning ahead, he had a crew dam up the river above the falls. At the perfect time, Pettigrew gave a signal to a crew out of sight up river tobreak the dam. The banker looked out astonished at the flow of water and agreed to the financing. The Queen Bee Flour Mill was designed to turn out 1200 barrels of flour a day and stood 105 feet tall. The overly ambitious project (not really enough water) failed in two ...

... drive through mostly flat land with no violet mountains, rolling hills or bluffs to change the view. I was left with one large question. Why are large round bales of hay scattered along both sides of the highway? There were lots of agriculture fields and numerous hay fields with mostly round bales either scattered or stacked in long rows. I'll have to google that!!

Charlie and I were glad to stop in Sioux Falls by about 4:00 pm.

A stop over in this small town after a long day.

We called into Cracker Barrel for a meal before heading for the Holiday Inn. This was the first time visiting Cracker Barrel despite our number of trips to the US in the past. Shame really as the meal was good. It's an early start tomorrow.

Chicago tomorrow

... scooped out as many leaves as she could. The rest we just ignored. The much needed swim however was short lived as the sky started becoming dark and it started to rain. After having showers and making dinner Morgan and I decided that we should go do laundry, while the other kids stayed and watched a movie. Angus came along shortly to help Morgan and i with the laundry, little ...

We started the day at Mount Rushmore. None of us had ever been there before. We used the audio tours again, and learned a great deal about the carvings, the presidents, the Black Hills and the Lakota people. It really is a special place, and we enjoyed the sculptures and hiking around through the park.

After Mt. Rushmore, we traveled through the Wind Cave National Park on our way to Hot Springs. We saw herds of buffalo and elk, and stopped for a close up look at both. It ...

... amp; drink once we had headed inside the gates we headed up to the 'party deck' to get some food & a drink!

Just as we did, the weather turned & in came the rain! It was torrential! The wind got up too!




It was soon obvious that we wouldn't get to see the baseball game & instead tried to ...

... we couldn't find the right building.

We stopped by the Wal-Mart and Lowe's to buy a few materials to adjust our magnetic signs for the return trip. I used white electrical tape to cover up the rear "Arctic" and write "Kansas City" over it. On the side sign I just used the marker to cross out the "To Arctic" and put "From Arctic Ocean".

Anyways, eventually we just left. At about the same place it started raining yesterday ...

... and cool, and I really wanted to get one night in this ideal sleeping-out weather as soon as possible. There's very little isolation between the tent sites - there are just a few strategically placed 10-15 foot high shade trees between each site. But the neighbors are friendly. It should be a pretty pleasant few days here and then on Monday I head out to the badlands. In the meantime, I now have a use for the duct tape I brought with me. Duct tape fixes everything.

falls park is right in sioux falls, south dakota. the whole area is a little hilly, but you totally dont expect these big ass rapids and waterfalls in the middle of the city like that. the whole area is a big park with observation decks and bike paths and foot bridges and all that jazz. you can walk right up on the rocks on the side of the river, and thats exactly what everyone was doing when we went to check it out. it was saturday so a bunch ...