Tuesday - So many things, so little time....

Well, Tuesday night finds us in Wall, South Dakota. Pretty much a tourist town - a bunch of motels/hotels, campgrounds, tourist stores and a few restaurants. Home of Wall Drug, an everything kind of store that advertised for about 200 plus miles across I-90 as we traveled through South Dakota. A nice place and we're going to be here for 2 nights, visiting the Bad Lands area.

In fact, billboards were one of the things we saw most of today. Hundreds of them, pretty much for the same few places.

We started out in Minnesota, and we were glad to leave Albert Lea behind. A mediocre experience at best. The rest of Minnesota we traveled, pretty much felt like Ohio, lots of farms, it was very green, and very pretty. Before leaving Minnesota, we traveled off the interstate to visit Blue Mounds State Park, named so for its stone outcroppings on this beautiful high bluff overlooking miles of relatively flat countryside. The stones were a beautiful blue/grey color. We walked up to some prairie on top of the bluff and what a sight, and so peaceful. It was a very religious feeling place, so quiet. It was in fact, Michele and Matt's favorite place of the day.

Oh, and who knew they had prickly pear cactus in Minnesota?!

Then we crossed into South Dakota, and the landscape after awhile began to change. More rolling hills, but not hills covered by farms and houses and trees. But rolling hills covered by green grass and fields, countless herds of cattle and an occasional house/farm here and there. And very few trees. We began to see even greater distances in the horizon and the landscape had a stark loneliness and beauty to it.

Then, all of the sudden, we were at the Badlands! These mounds of barren rock and dirt just began to appear out of the rolling hills and they are kind of hard to picture, until you think of them as giant sandcastles sticking out of the South Dakota prairie. Everywhere as far as you can see.

First, though, we headed to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. South Dakota housed 150 nuclear missiles below it's prairie for decades, now all decommissioned.

Then we stopped at the Ranch Store, which had a real prairie dog town to see and feed. Claire loved them, and wanted to take one home with us. But we decided we had Aaron, so we had enough rodents in our life.

Then into the Badlands National Park to check out the visitors center and gift shop. Wednesday we are really going to get into the Badlands and do some hiking and a driving tour. Today we weren't ready to make that jump after all the driving and jet lag (we're now 2 hours behind you all).

We headed to Wall and checked in, toured Wall Drug and our now safely tucked away in our beds.