TeamRaymond Across America - Day Two
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Written from Carla and Colin’s guest room
Miles today: 787
Total miles: 1426
Number of states: 10
Number of McDonald’s stops: 2
Today’s route: Bloomington, IN -> Peoria, IL -> Davenport, IA -> Albert Lea, MN -> Sioux Falls
Greetings from Sioux Falls, South Dakota!
La Raymunda and I are staying with Carla and Colin in their sprawling mansion behind the driving range. This place is HUGE! And their bath towels…mmmm, plush!
(I’m downloading last night’s episode of American Idol as I write this so we can watch it in the Jeep as we drive across South Dakota to the Badlands.)
We drove 787 miles yesterday, which, together with the previous day’s drive of 638 miles, puts us more than 1400 miles into our trip in just two days. The good part is that the boring parts of the trip are largely finished (sorry to anyone offended, but Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and southern Minnesota just aren’t very exciting) and we’re looking at five days of short trips through much more interesting parts of the country. Coming up: the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Rockie Mountains, the red rocks and canyons of Utah and the Grand Canyon. I’m really looking forward to the next few days of the trip.
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Ellettsville, Indiana sits just outside Bloomington on IN-46. We used that and IN-231 to get us to I-74 which took us up diagonally to the northwest through Illinois to Iowa and I-80. The town is quintessential Americana, at least judging by the view from the road. A small, wooden, white-spired church just off the main drag, clusters of homes with large backyards dotted with swingsets, a clean, tidy brick fire station and flags fluttering from flag poles.
“Wow,” I said to Debra. “This town is so America.”
“I was just going to say that,” she said.
“This is the image of ourselves we like to portray.”
“Mm-hmm,” she assented.
“As opposed to that other one with the guns.”
On another note, we had a lengthy discussion about which route to take through Iowa to get to Sioux Falls. Debra spent and hour or so plotting and measuring different routes and found that they all came out to roughly the same distance. So when she asked if I would rather go to Sioux Falls via Nebraska or Minnesota, I chose Minnesota. Not only did I grow up there, but it makes a much better story to say that you drove from Washington, D.C. to LA via Minnesota. You know, because most people think Minnesota is in Canada.
One final note (I hope) on the odd products sold from the condom vending machines in the roadside men’s rooms of America. I’m not convinced that the makers of the products are aware of what is actually going on down there when two consenting adults engage in amorous enterprise, because in a restroom in Indiana they sell a product called the Tickle Ring, which looked like a dog collar that Sid Vicious would have worn. It had three rows of spikes - made of latex, I hope - circling the ring that apparently enhance one’s experience. “Studded for increased sexual pleasure!” the label claimed. Studded? Oh, the humanity!
And with that final salvo we are off to have breakfast, or perhaps brunch, with Carla and Colin (thanks for letting us crash with you!!) and then bid them and their lovely mansion and their plush bath towels au revoir as we continue west to the Badlands and our night’s rest in Hot Springs, South Dakota. Along the way we’ll pass the Corn Palace, Wall Drug (whose first billboard we spotted in Minnesota on I-90 - “Wall Drug…only 355 miles!”), where we’ll get a maple-frosted donut, the Badlands and perhaps Mount Rushmore, which is equally stunning in the daytime or at night.