Saturday

Saturday, April 17

Happy Earth Day!

So, I forgot a couple things along the way.... On the way to Mt Rushmore the other day, a sherrif passed us, lights flashing, racing along. He quickly was out of sight. A couple miles down the road, we found out where he was going. We were in the mountains and anyone who has driven in the mountains knows, even in the best weather, mountain driving, which can be winding curves and steep grades, you need to be extra careful. Well, someone obviously was not watching and lost control of their SUV going around a curve and flipped over the guard rail. The SUV was on its side and the EMTs were attending to someone. Everyone who was in the SUV was extremely lucky it didnt roll down the embankment. Im kinda glad I grew up in Colorado where I learned to drive in the moutains, snow, rain, sleet, you name it!

I also forgot to mention ... I saw a porcupine! OK, so it wasnt in the best conditions ... but.. I cant remember having ever seen one, even in a zoo. And ... speaking of wild animals, on the way to Murdo, there was tons of antelope! Saw very little deer, but lots and lots of antelope. Very cool!

Officially, after 8 days, we have driven 3930 miles. We started at 46700 and ended last night at 50630. Well on our way to the estimated 5900 round trip!

(Shhhhhh...... dont tell anyone, but today dawned late!) We scheduled a wake up call for 830am. It didnt come, and we woke up at 845a. Yet another strange thing about Chris, his internal clock. He just knows when he has to get up, no matter what time it is, or how long he wants to sleep. So we try to quickly get ready and get some breakfast. Luckily, the Auto Museum was right next door to the hotel. There was lots of interesting cars, tractors, motors, toys... The owner said he had been obtaining items since 1954! Wow! Some items were classics, some collectibles, some just interesting. We spent about 1.5 hours walking around the 10 acre museum. Before leaving, we visited the gift shop (danger, Will Robinson, danger!), and I see a small gold mining kit. Well, I already bought my dirt to mine for sapphires and garnets, why not try to see if I can find some extremely small pieces of Black Hills Gold? lol Just for fun.

We head out to our only other destination for the day, the Sioux Falls Zoo. It is Earth Day and they had lots of tents up with information about animals and wildlife and converservation. We even got a free "green" grocery bag! We saw lots of animals, including bears, tigers, and ostriches! It was a nice day and it was great to spend time outside.

We head south, our destination for tomorrow is Omaha, NE and the Henry Doorly Zoo. We find a hotel, find a Walgreens (I need a script refilled), grab some dinner and get settled for the night. I spent most of the evening looking for things to do for the next couple days as we didnt really plan for anything for the next week, other than where we were going and where we need to be at the end of each day. Found a couple things and am looking forward to doing a couple of them! Probably an early night tonight as I think we have an early day tomorrow.

No rain today!