Food Failures

  Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Saturday, June 27, 2009

Day 29 - Badlands NP to Minneapolis, MN

Broke down the camp in record time because we were on a time crunch today. Iris had to be at the airport hundreds of miles away in Minneapolis by 6ish. A loooooong day of driving full speed ahead.

Things we did on the way to Minneapolis:
- While Bri and Iris were in the visitor center at Badlands getting us coffee, an SUV sped up beside Christen in the parking lot. A lady rolled down the window and said, “Excuse me, are you from Decatur??” Christen was taken aback (after all, it was only 7am and we were in the middle of South Dakota). Come to find out, the lady and her husband live in Midtown. They had seen the Dekalb license plate. CRAZY. Christen chatted with them and compared roadtrips. They were on their way to Vancouver.
- Iris saw wild turkeys on the last drive through the park to the highway.
- Christen made the exceptionally faulty assumption that there would be food on I-90. Iris had suggested getting cheap pancakes at the KOA before they left, but Christen had argued against it because she didn’t think that they should lose the time waiting for the pancakes, and eating pancakes fast does not set well with her. Boy, was this the wrong move. There was NOTHING on the highway. NOTHING. Not even a McDonald’s for over a hundred miles. The result? A carload of Angry Europeans moving at the speed of light in silence. Christen wished that she could build a wall around herself in the driver’s seat.
- Finally spotted a Golden Arches in the distance. Minnie's clock reported that it was 9:30am, so we had time to get breakfast. All of us piled out of the car, happy to get food. But no. South Dakota failed to tell us at some point that we had entered a new time zone. McDonald's was no longer selling breakfast because it was 10:30am there. Christen declared that she was giving up.

The Corn Palace

- Stopped at the Corn Palace. This is yet another American Roadside Oddity. The exterior of the Corn Palace is covered in murals. Guess what those murals are made of…CORN! The whole exterior is corn, actually. Corn of all different colors. They even have to re-do the whole thing every year because the birds come and eat the sides of the building off. Weird, eh? We think so.
- Stopped for lunch in the cosmopolitan city of Sioux Falls, SD. My, my, my. This was a special one. We are really not sure why they have a perimeter highway. It can’t be longer than ten miles.
- Realized that we had made really good time by that point, and figured that we could probably sit down for lunch. Decided on Ruby Tuesday’s since it has a large salad bar that would be fast and vegetarian-friendly. Remember that we were also quite hungry due to no breakfast. We put Ruby Tuesday’s in Jane the GPS, and she gave us directions. Perfect. We went to where she told us to go, and there was no Ruby Tuesday’s. We drove up and down and turned around. Still no Ruby Tuesday’s. We asked a blue-haired old lady in a parking lot at a shaved ice stand, and she told us that it just changed to an IHOP. Damn. Ugh. Argh. We did not have time to shop around for anything else!
- Saw an Applebee’s across the street. REALLY didn’t want Applebee’s, but did not have time to go searching for other things. None of us had eaten at an Applebee’s in ages, but we assumed that there must be SOMETHING on the menu for vegetarians…
- Nope. We sat down, looked at a menu, saw nothing we could eat, and we were about to leave when the General Manager came over. He informed us that they once had a veggie burger, but no one ever ordered it. He also told us that we shouldn’t bother to go anywhere else because they don’t have vegetarians in South Dakota, and all of their restaurants are heavy on meat. He then told us that he would knock a few dollars off of their entrée salads if we ordered them without meat. Which we did. It was fine. But we don’t need to go back.
- Lost a great deal of time due to the Ruby Tuesday’s-Applebee’s fiasco. Floored it to get to the airport on time.

Hmmm... No Explanation

- Hours later, stopped at Subway to get Iris a sandwich to take with her into the airport. Bri and Iris went in while Christen went to get gas. When Christen came back, she could see them still inside, and it looked like Iris was doing a strange dance. Come to find out, Iris had lost her credit card.
- After a huge panic, the credit card was found in Iris’s bag in the car. Iris had been so diligent earlier in the day that she had already pulled her license and credit card out for the airport, and had then forgotten all about it. Phew. Silly Iris.
- Bri and Christen got a Subway to go as well, forgoing their pre-selected pub in Minneapolis. They were just too exhausted. The Holy Grail could have been in Minneapolis, and they would have still skipped out on it.
- Journey was named the Artist of the Day after we heard them six times on the radio. Unfortunately, it was the same two songs over and over. We happen to love Journey and have even seen them in concert, but it was a bit much.
- Made it to the airport at exactly the time we had been shooting for. Collective exhale of relief by everyone in the car.
- Iris called fifteen minutes later to say that she was already through security and sitting at her gate. All of the rushing for nothing. Sigh.

Welcome to Minnesota!

- Arrived at our Comfort Suites in downtown Minneapolis. Very odd. It was in the top of a high-rise building with an indoor courtyard and waterfall, but the rooms were remarkably outdated. It passed the clean test, though, so we didn’t care.
- Our suite had a living room, dining area, kitchen, and separate bedroom. We ate our Subways on the bed.
- Bri did three loads of laundry and Christen posted three blogs.
- We also watched about ten million tributes to Michael Jackson. (Keep in mind that this was the first time we had seen a television in over a week.)
- Passed out. Can’t remember the last time we were this tired…