11,500 miles

Burlington, VT. Been driving for nearly 24 straight hours. Less than 2 hours and 100 miles left.

Back in the Eastern Time Zone

On our way home.

We left Madison this morning heading home via Green Bay, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and Canada we should get in late Tuesday or Wednesday. We had a great time in Madison. We saw uncle Tim run a half marathon, cousin Patrick play high school soccer, and polished off the day with tubing on lake Mendota in front of the state capital and governor Scott Walker's mansion (unfortunately there weren't any teachers protesting by jet ski). Pictures later. We will likely have radio silence in Canada unless we hit some WiFi.

So far

Headed home tomorrow.

More Lambeau

The preseason football was not great and the Packers got killed, but the Lambeau experience was still cool.  Much better than a tour.  We bought great 40 yard line tickets on Stub Hub and it was clear that all the people around us were season ticket holders who knew everybody in the surrounding rows.  The guy sitting next to me immediately asked me where I was from when I sat down.  In the pictures notice the normal looking local college kid cheerleaders.  There was a high school band at halftime.  We had a flyover by the National Guard at the beginning of the game.  None of the seats have backs.  We will drive through Green Bay on our way out of town on Sunday and we may poke our heads in again to see a practice session.

 

Lambeau Field

The Pack got blown out by the Browns. Despite some pretty awful preseason football the stands stayed pretty much full through the third quarter. Pretty cool seeing a game in Lambeau even if it doesn't count.

Packers Browns pre season

We were planning to make a trek up to Green Bay to visit Lambeau on our way east.  Driving to Madison yesterday it dawned on us that there is a pre season game against the Browns tonight.  After a few go arounds with Stub Hub we have some nice seats for tonight's game.

Corn Palace

We did a quick morning visit to the World Famous Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.  The outside and inside of the building are decorated in corn and hay.  They change the outside every year.  Since the corn festival is next week, they were putting the finishing touches on the decorations for this year.  I got a nice picture taken with Cornelius.  After the corn palace, we headed to Madison, WI via a drive through Iowa.

Little Town on the Prarie

Stopped by De Smet, SD, the final place where Ma, Pa, Laura and the gang lived during the childhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  There is a living history museum on the site of their homestead. Unfortunately, the annual pageant (familiar to fans of "This American Life") only happens in July.  After the visit we drove south to Mitchell, the site of the World Famous Corn Palace.  We will likely head pretty directly to Madison today for a couple of days with Sheila's sister.

North Dakota

Sheila has now been to all of the lower 48.  I think I need Minnesota.  The girls are still missing the deep south.  Mary is missing Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  Abby is missing those plus Maine.  Nat need to get the three Mary is missing plus Georgia and South Carolina.

We spent over an our driving east in North Dakota.  It does not look much different than South Dakota.

Pierre

Woke up in Pierre, SD.  Headed north to North Dakota.

10,000 miles

We sadly did not mark this occasion with lots of hollering.  We were on our way out of Badlands National Park and into the Buffalo Gap Grasslands.  Lots of miles.  We needed a second oil change in Riverton, WY.

Off to North Dakota

Since North Dakota is the only state in the lower 48 that Sheila has never visited (oddly enough I still need Minnesota as well as North Dakota) we have decided to make a not so short side trip to North Dakota.  We are spending the night in Pierre, SD which is the second least populous state capital (pop 13,860) after our neighbor Montpelier, VT (pop 7,868).

Badlands National Park

I won't lie to you, after all the parks we've seen Badlands was not that exciting.  We pretty much did a quick drive through, seeing a Bison, a bighorn sheep, and some prairie dogs.  The cool thing about prairie dogs is that they apparently carry the plague (take a good look at the picture of the sign).  Who knew?  This is not the first time we've seen this.  In a Safeway parking lot near Cortez, CO (near Mesa Verde) we saw a similar sign warning of Bubonic Plague.

Wall Drug Signs

This is about 40 miles worth of signs and I missed a few

Wall Drug

If you've ever driven the upper midwest route across the country you've seen the Wall Drug signs.  Wall drug (in Wall, SD) has been something of an institution since the depression when they started giving out free ice water and selling 5 cent coffee, both of which they still do.  It has grown to take up an entire city block and is pretty much insane.  It absolutely exceeded my expectations.  I will never feel the same way about Dan and Whit's again.

Sturgis

Sturgis, SD is, of course, the home of the original bike week starting back in the 30's.  Bike week ended Friday, so rolling through town on Monday we observed the aftermath.  Lots of discounted t-shirts were available.  Apparently a significant amount of the regional economy revolves around bike week.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, we have been seeing the spillovers from Sturgis since leaving the west coast.

Deadwood

Because they were kind of on the way and I was interested we drove through Deadwood and Sturgis on our way out of the Mount Rushmore area.  The first pic is of the saloon where Wild Bill Hickock was killed.  We did not hang out for long enough to see if the use of profanity was as high as I was expecting.

Final Wildlife pics from Custer State Park

Seen this morning.  We woke up to see the Bison grazing at one of the empty campsites 50 feet from our camper.  We saw the Elk on the drive out of the park.

Threading the Needle

Took a drive on the Needles Hwy in Custer State Park (with the camper attached). It has 3 one lane tunnels. The smallest is only 8 feet 4 inches wide. There is also a rock formation called the needle's eye.