To South Dakota!

Alex, James, Griff and I left the Holiday Inn Express outside of Madison at 10:00 and headed due west. I was excited about this drive because we’d finally get to some open spaces. But before we could get to these open spaces, we had to drive through 300 miles of “America’s Dairyland”.

Around lunchtime Alex and I stopped in Lacrosse, Wisconsin to eat and pick up some supplies at the local Wal-Mart. Ahh, Wal-Mart - the only place where you can buy boxer shorts, bullets, and beer at the same time. Just west of Lacrosse lies the Mississippi River and Minnesota, and it was a beautiful view of the river as we crossed. Unfortunately, Alex is no Ansel Adams either, so we didn’t get any good pictures of it. And really, now that I’ve crossed the Mississippi three times in the past week, I should be used to it, right?

For the next 260 miles we were in Minnesota. I wish I had something interesting to say about our drive through Minnesota, but it was just dairy farm after dairy farm. Sine I-90 runs just north of the Iowa border, we did take a detour down to Iowa, just so we can now say we’ve been to Iowa. But I was glad we did this, ‘cause we got to see what is meant by “amber waves of grain.” Straight up amber waves of grain everywhere there.

By 5:00 we finally made it into South Dakota. One thing I didn’t realize was that it would be so freaking windy. The car door slammed back on my knee when I tried to get out at the welcome center. One nice thing about South Dakota is that the speed limit on the interstates is 75 - that made the last 150 miles of the trip go by very quickly. When we got to Mitchell, SD we went and saw the world-famous “Corn Palace”, which is a civic center decorated completely with corn. Wow. Apparently current NBA star Mike Miller played his high school games there at the Corn Palace. I bet his teammates in the league give him shit about that. But it was actually a pretty neat place to see. We got back on the road, and right before we got to Chamberlain/Oacoma (where we were staying the night), we went to a scenic rest area for an amazing view of the Missouri River. This was really the first truly beautiful natural sight I’d seen on this trip.

Now it was time for dinner. The attendant at the Holiday Inn said that we should go to the Derby Coffee Shop for steaks because they grill out on Fridays and Saturdays. So we wandered into Chamberlain and to the Derby. We got there right as it was closing, but since we got in “before they lock the door”, they said they’d feed us. It was just as the attendant had said – a coffee shop with a grill out front. The owner’s father, though, cooked some damn good steaks. He also chatted us up about what to see in the Badlands area, and even gave James a packet of his special steak seasonings. Having an Englishman with you will get you perks, for sure!

After we left dinner we headed to the Silver Dollar Bar. Hahaha, man, we were so freaking out of place at this joint. It was just as you might imagine, a lot of dudes drinking beer. Everyone was fairly friendly to us though, and Alex even played some games of foosball with one of the guys. There was this band playing that was a site to behold though. Have you seen the movie “Sling Blade”? Well, this band was like the abusive boyfriend’s band in “Sling Blade”. Good times. I also need to mention that the price for a beam and coke at this joint was $2. Oh yeah, my kind of bar. We eventually left the Silver Dollar and headed to another bar in the area called Al’s Oasis. At Al’s I might a guy named Mike, who was in town from Madison, South Dakota to do some fishing. We talked about South Dakota and Jim Beam for a while, and then we gave him a ride back to the Holiday Inn where he was staying as well. It was a long day, but it’s good to be out west finally.