Road Trip! Day One and Two...

And we're off!  A three day trek across 7 states to Wyoming.

We started off on July 22nd with an early morning trip to a rental car dealer, then across town to Lakewood to leave a vehicle and a dog with Gram.  The traffic gods were with us and we did not see a whisper of rush-hour traffic as we traveled across post-DNC Cleveland.  We were back on the highway by 9:30, headed west on Route 90.... for 13 hours...  

It ended up being a longer day than we anticipated, even knowing we had 9 and a half hours of scheduled driving ahead of us.

Here we are, still fresh and ready for adventure, at our one "roadside attraction" stop for the day:  The RV Hall of Fame Museum in Elkhart, Indiana. 

 We did not go in the museum but we did go in this totally rockin' 1970's beauty on display outside.

After this stop, Indiana completely fell out of favor, as we encountered one traffic snag after another on the toll road.  We lost a good hour of time just past Elkhart, then spent the rest of the state, and most of Illinois, weaving in between I-90 and Route 20, and any other combination of roads that seemed to move use forward and weren't covered in dark red dashes in Maps.  Not the most efficient way to travel, it turns out.  A small bright spot-- we were so very grateful to have our EZ-Pass transponder, which made it, well, EZ to get on and off the toll road, over and over.  As we were in a rental car, our transponder was not velcroed handily to the windshield, so there was a lot of me holding it up to the window as we went through booths and under sensors.  Still, a godsend.   Our kids were troupers, too.  Not sure HOW long they were stuck in the car without a break, actually.  We decided not to stop until we were back on 90 past Chicago...


Life began looking up in Wisconsin.  Turns out, Wisconsin is gorgeous.  And virtually taffic free, at least at 7pm (which is when we got there...)  We made another scenic stop in Spring Green, which is apparently a hotbed of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.  Of course we found this out about an  hour before driving through there... if I'd known in advance we might have timed our trip a little differently, to at least give ourselves the option of touring Taliesin.  As it was, we had to content ourselves with a sunset drive-by.

This pretty spot is definitely someplace to come back to...

Look!   A waterfall AND a FLW house.  Too much!

 It was a beautiful if slightly spooky drive through the rest of WI to our night's destination.  Which was located, apparently, in the precise middle of nowhere.  We wound through dark hills (who knew WI was so hilly?) on dark roads with a layer of low fog obscuring the valleys near the roads, snaking white fingers among the trees.  Our windows fogged up too for a while and we got a little turned around at a detour for a closed bridged and I thought for a minute we might not make it to a bed that night...

But we did!  We enjoyed a too-short, quiet night at our first AirBnB stop-- this little farm outside of Viroqua, Wisconsin.

Friendly cats, chickens, yummy food left for us to make breakfast, peace and quiet and privacy.  It was a lovely respite from a crazy-long first day on the road.

Day 2.  Dawned grey and soft for our morning on the farm, then shifted to glum and rainy by the time we hit the road.  A bit disappointing as this was our big day to cross the Mississippi...  a bit anticlimactic through the rain-splattered windows and all the fog...

 We didn't let that get us down, though!  Here's a view into the backseat insanity, where these two little champs rode along with nary a complaint and only a little spatting. They enjoyed the "treat bags" I had prepared, though there was some of the aforementioned spatting about who would open which one.... hits included the boxes of Mike and Ikes, the water tubes, the movie Babe (watched two days in a row!) and a book of jokes.  The only miss so far was the "noise putty," which Ivy oh-so-generously gifted back to me because neither of the kids liked it...

Roadside Attraction time!

The Jolly Green Giant, of course.

Across Minnesota we went.  Green and pretty as it flew by  (thank you, traffic gods, for giving us a better day!)

Our next stops were at the South Dakota line. 

Awesome touristy trading post place....

 Not terribly scenic "Scenic Overlook" that we had to climb about 400000 steps to get to...

We also stood on three states in Valley Springs SD!  Well, technically it was at a crossroads in the middle of a field in three states at once.

 It was awesome.

 As we were driving through Souix Falls, trying to decide if we would stop at 1880 Cowboy Town, we saw a sign for "Falls Park" and thought, wait a minute, is there a WATERFALL in Souix Falls?  We turned around and went back an exit and found this:

A veritable Eden in the middle of the prairie.

It was so stinking hot but we were stalwart, hiking down to the falls and thoroughly enjoying this lovely little park.  With ALLLLL the other tourists.  It turns out that being in touristy spots with lots of other tourists isn't so bad, as long as you freely admit that you, too, are a tourist.  In general, everyone is in good spirits and reasonably friendly, and there is a certain air of festivity to a crowd.  And an air of solidarity to a crown dealing, in unison, with 97 degree temperatures...

We skipped 1880 cowboy town. We almost skipped dinner, too, because it turns out that towns with restaurants in them are few and far between in Eastern South Dakota.  Got some diner food in a little town about half an hour from our destination, then found our way to our second farm of the trip, in Fairfax SD.

We don't like to get to our accommodations too early in the day... :)

Friendly cats on a farm, again, but overall a very different AirBnB experience as our hosts were home this time, and very chatty. A nice couple with ties to Switzerland and tons of IKEA decor everywhere in their farmhouse.  A house which  they bought for $20,000 and moved 5 miles down the road to its current location.  Pretty cool.  They also made us breakfast, with the most delicious French Toast.  And there was a super awesome friendly dog. Nice place to stay!

Coming up in the next post:  South Dakota, land of the roadside attraction (Day 3)