Day 2: Breaking the 1000-Mile Mark

With a relatively brief overnight stop at a barely-off-the-highway KOA in Minnesota, we were back on the road in our quest to reach the Badlands today – but we’re not quite there yet.

Along the way we have all enjoyed watching the changes from one region to the next... Who knew that Minnesota had pink roads? And that, there are so many windmills spread across the beautiful farmlands along I-90, we had to stop counting (it was getting in the way of our license plate search, after all, which currently holds at 26 states)! And that we would be lucky enough to drive right by “The Golden Spike” (remember that East-meets-West thing from grade school social studies)? And that the rolling pastures of South Dakota look like a huge links golf course with cattle on it?

Other interesting observations include:

• The most picturesque little church ever... a modestly-sized white one, nestled among a few trees on a distant hillside, complete with a perfect little bell tower, steeple and simple stained-glass windows

• Porter’s Outdoor Sculpture Park, right along-side I-90, which boasts “The World’s Largest Bull Head”. Because, you know, there’s nothing cooler than a 4-story sculpture of a bull’s head in between a couple of otherwise non-descript farms along the highway. Absolutely nothing.

• And, quite conveniently for all travelers who may incur foot injuries during fender benders in these here parts, Dick’s Auto Shop offers “Free 24-Hour Toe Service” (as we learned from several well-placed billboards).

Closer to “home”, we learned many things about RV life, including:

• When consuming something in the RV, make sure you’re not doing it while on someone else’s bed

• A heavy bag of activity books and gadgets probably isn’t best placed on a shelf where it is just 4 to 5 big bounces from falling on the driver’s head (don’t worry... discovered it by the second bounce)

• When you forget to follow the rule of “always close the side door tightly, and be sure to keep it locked,” the entrance ramp back onto the highway is A LOT more interesting than usual

• If you try to turn the water on in the bathroom sink, but nothing comes out, it’s a best practice to go ahead and turn it back off again anyway... You just never know when someone else might turn the water pump on to use the kitchen sink, not realizing that the bathroom sink is now going with full gusto... for quite a while

• And when the water in the bathroom sink is going with full gusto behind the closed door, that the pretty loud engine noise from the RV completely drowns the sound of it out (pardon the pun)... So when I say that faucet ran “for quite a while,” I REALLY mean quite a while... particularly because the towel that was hanging on the door had fallen in such a way as to keep the water on the floor from leaking into the main cabin (preventing all visual evidence of the “leak” as well!)

• But, all in all, we also learned that it’s nice to have a line of people to play “Catch The Paper Towel Roll” when someone inadvertently kicks Grandma’s morning coffee down the entire length of RV aisle while we are cruising at 70 mph... with one end of the roll several people away, you just lay that line of towels down on the floor like the red carpet to the Oscars in 4 seconds flat! It was the ultimate implementation of the quicker-picker-upper, in my experience anyway.

Today was also our first obligatory RV stop at Wal-Mart. Steve and I were both of the opinion that this particular stop was such an intrinsic part of this experience, that we built it into our first stop for gas today. Among the various food items we piled in the cart to get us through the next few days, we found some ketchup-flavored potato chips which, until today, I thought were only sold in Canada (where I had them for the first time last summer). We also learned that our kids have fully digested the concept of divide-and-conquer, as they skillfully diverted their Grandmother off of our well-advertised food-only course and succeeded in leading her deftly enough through their chosen aisles to arrive victorious at the other side of the check-out lane with her – and their various coveted “treasures” – before the parental paddy wagon had a chance to frisk them for any and all contraband and lead them back to the RV empty-handed (... but, oh, thank heavens for those brand new swim trunks emblazoned with characters from the “How to Train Your Dragon” movie, complete with the fully coordinating beach towels... ‘cause, you know, one would never want to be caught dead on the glorious beaches of Mt. Rushmore with anything other than THAT full ensemble!). Not to be out-done, of course, Steve and I were great about returning the favor to Grandma, having already added some Jolly-Rancher-sour-apple-green colored slippers in our cart just for her... with the best part of these “Slipper Genies” (real name) being that they are outfitted with even BRIGHTER neon green microfiber yarns hanging from the bottom (think “slippers that look kind of toothbrush-y”) so that she can earn her keep around here by shuffling the RV floors to a high gloss for the next 2 weeks. Woo Hoo! Who knew you could get anything THAT great outside of an infomercial!

But the only difference between this Wal-Mart and any other one we have stumbled upon in the past was that the lady who was talking on her mobile while attending to her business in the bathroom stall had a distinctive Minnesota accent. Otherwise, beyond the accent, just Wal-Mart as usual! Well, almost anyway... As we pulled away from the scene, I couldn’t help but feel like perhaps we didn’t execute upon this whole experience correctly when I noticed, from the vantage point of my co-pilot seat, that the cup holders and adjacent cubbies in the front of our big rig were stocked with Starbucks coffee mugs, a bottle of Perrier and a bag of organic, whole grain “Gourmet Brown Rice Crisps.” With any luck, our next stop for groceries won’t fit quite so nicely as a scene from one of the “City Slickers” movies?

Oh, but in this gloriously over-done blog entry from today’s long day of driving, I forgot to list one last thing on the list of things we have learned so far... That 1,050 miles is a really, really, really, REALLY long drive to take on in a little bit more than one day, but it’s not far enough to have dampened our spirits about all of the exciting things we are hoping to experience over the next two weeks!

Giddy-Up, and Yee Hah! (yeah... I’m not really qualified to do that... YET!)