Black Hills, Day Four: The {long} Road Home

We took I-90 home and the only things worth talking about are Wall Drug and The Corn Palace.  Since this post is coming so long after the trip, I was drawing a blank on what to talk about... so I asked Steve if he had any memories worth posting on a blog, word for word this is what he wrote:

"omg, $0.05 coffee!"
"omg, donuts"
"omg, tacos"
"omg, gas"
"omg, dinosurs"
"omg, breakfast"
"omg, wall drug, soon"
"wall drug, not too far away"
"wall drug, you'll see it before you see a tree"
"wall drug, we have cows"
"wall drug, we have stuff"
"wall drug, we have ads on every piece of land in SD"
Hay.
Wind.
Boredom.
Corn Palace
Breakfast making, part 1, almost eaten alive.
Sandwich making, almost blown over.
We used a wind sail to make it home
Minnesota, the longest leg of the drive.
BW's, a short break from the car
boredom
Minnesota sucks for driving speed limits.
I90 feels never ending Oh, and making up stories

Let me do a bit of explaining on some of those notes:

First of all: Wall Drug... they seriously have ads everywhere along this highway.  The ads are for literally everything you can think of.  I was trying to amp Steve up for Wall Drug, so I was being obnoxious every time we came across a sign.  His memories are tainted with my over the top antics.  That whole top portion of his notes are based on those signs.  We did finally make it to Wall Drug: 

We decided the night before that we should just pack up camp as soon as we wake up and on one of the stops we can pull out our camp stove and make omelets.  It'll be a good break for us from driving.  While on the road to Wall Drug we decide that it'll be a good place to make this happen.  So, after literally just using the bathroom at Wall Drug, we get back in the car and head to the gas station as we needed gas as well.  I asked about a park with picnic tables and was instructed where to find one.  After we fill up we want to go see this huge dinosaur at the end of the road - as we approach this huge dinosaur we see picnic tables right there... who needs a park?!  So we pull out the stove, the cooler... all the essentials for making our breakfast - just as we're about to get everything going, Steve notices these little gnat type bugs all over his white shirt.  They are biting us and they are ALL OVER!  ugh.  We pack everything back into the car and head to the park.  We are finally able to make our omelets and the town of Wall ends up being an hour long stop.

Back on the road... it sucks and it's BORING.

We play games, we stop to pee, we stop to get munchies out of the trunk, we stop to change drivers... anything to switch it up from this mundane drive.  Want to know how bored we were?  Steve says "I'm thinking of a number between 0-100; guess what it is" Then we play higher/lower until I get it.  Not only did we play this once, but probably a dozen times.  We also played I'm thinking of a letter between A-Z; guess it.  That's right folks, South Dakota is amazing.  NOT.

After like 27 days of driving...

...we finally make it to The Corn Palace, which is like forever off the highway and NOT worth your time... unless you are going absolutely crazy in the car and just need to see something ... anything ... different, and maybe stretch your legs.

All these 'murals' are made of ears of corn.  It actually is pretty neat... but not enough to make it exciting.  At least we got out of the car.

After seeing the Corn Palace we decided to run in an antique store really quick (limiting ourselves to 15 minutes) just for another change of pace; we buy nothing.  On the way back out to the highway we stop at the gas station to make up some sammies (sandwiches) before we get back on the road.  It's fricken WINDY outside and I damn near blow away while running the garbage to the trash bin.  So that was cool.

We finally make it back into our home state; Minnesota!

So now even though we are a good 5 hours away from home, we are at least in our state, which really makes you feel like you're about an hour away.  Longest. hour. ever.   Not only do we have to slow our speed way down, but Steve takes me on some dumb country road where we are driving slower than being on the interstate.  I get over that and just keep driving.
Steve is pretty much amazing when it comes to making up stories and he really knows how to make me laugh, so he makes up this crazy story about Charlotte and Charlie - it's not appropriate for my blog, so I'll move on, but not before letting you know that I almost peed my pants from laughing so hard.  TMI?  Too bad.

We are trying to calculate our eta back home and decide by the time we get home, we'll never get anything to eat for dinner.  Mankato is a hop, skip, and a jump away {45 minutes or so} - there is a Buffalo Wild Wings there... we both LOVE wings... so we chose to stop and delay our trip home a bit longer.  It's necessary though, it gets us out of the car and gets food in our belly's.

After eating it seems like the rest of the trip was a breeze.  It wasn't too much longer before we were in metro area and once you have things around you other than farms it's a lot less boring.

If you missed part of the trip, here are all the posts:

The Road There

Devil's Tower

Needles Highway and Crazy Horse

Wildlife Loop Road

Mount Rushmore

Caves

Rushmore at night

Thus concludes my postings of this trip; I hope you've enjoyed all the pictures and things that we got to see while on our road trip!  You can view all my pictures on my shutterfly (all unedited): hopesdope.shutterfly.com

PS - this is the front of my car taken at Devil's Tower in the beginning of the trip - 

I wanted to take one at the end but was too tired when I got home and it rained the next morning on the way to work - so a lot of the bugs washed off.  Imagine this doubled in guts.  We killed a lot of bugs, and a bird, and almost a magic rabbit.