Travels with Cece, Eric and Sarah: There Is A Lot of Room in This Country

After leaving Crazy Horse, we headed back to Rapid City for dinner. Rapid City is South Dakota’s second largest city and has a very cute downtown. Then, after swimming the next morning, it was on to Wall Drug (a major tourist trap/stop), the Badlands, and Mitchell for the Corn Place before heading to Sioux Falls, South Dakota’s largest city.

Wall Drug is this huge drug store that sells all manner of things – western wear, ice cream, rocks, western art, prepared food, candy etc. The place is huge and they have no intercom which would prove to be a major problem when I got separated from Cece, Sarah and Eric. Ninety minutes later when I finally found them, Cece had taken a picture with an Annie Oakley mannequin (of course). Suffice it say that Annie Oakley was as not as cute as the woman who played her in “Annie Get Your Gun” if the mannequin is anything to go by. When I found Cece, Sarah and Eric, they were hanging out with some people that they had met at Mount Rushmore and agreeing to get in touch with them if we passed through South Dakota again. Not likely, but we are keeping it mind. A wedding was taking place in the chapel at Wall Drug while we there. We were invited to attend, but we passed on that. I mean I would feel awful about attending a wedding without having a gift for the bride and groom and then there is the whole not knowing them thing. But, I did decide that on my next trip, I am going to accept some of these random invitations and see what happens. There is a theory that Jamaicans are everywhere and that proved true in Wall where I met three Jamaicans working at Wall Drug.

Next up the Badlands. Of course, we had to listen to “Badland” by Bruce as we drove into Badlands National Park. That’s why it’s nice to have an I-pod in the car. The GPS kept trying to get us to make phantom left and right turns off cliffs, but we made it through. Moments after I called Andrew to say hi and scoffed at his warning about snakes, I saw a sign warning us about rattlesnakes. And, moments later we saw a rattle snake sunning on a rock. To top that off, people went running over to the snake which naturally slithered off only to be chased down a ravine by a teenage boy. I mean what about “Beware Rattlesnakes” makes a person think that he should chase after one. Luckily, the snake decided not to kill this boy and all was well. We also saw mountain goats in the Badlands. Check out the pictures. They totally blend into the mountains and then walk around these steep angles like they are on flatland.

On our way to our next stop, Mitchellville, we were passed by a car. Later we would meet those people when we stopped for dinner in Chamberlain. They remembered passing us. We got to chatting and after expressing surprise that we planned to go to North Dakota they invited us to dinner at their home in Sioux Falls. We had to pass on that because we were only going to be in Sioux Falls for that one night. Later when they passed us again, we bid each other a fond farewell. People are friendly like that in South Dakota. It’s kind of weird, but you get used to it. I had to drive like a westerner (i.e. very fast) to get to Mitchellville before total darkness. Mitchellville is the home of the Corn Palace and no, it is not made of corn. It is a concrete concert hall that is decorated annually with murals made of corn. Again, Sarah was too cool to get out of the car, but Eric, Cece and I loved it. On to next one, Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls is nice. Nothing to crazy happened there and the falls are nice. Eric met a fellow four year old who was staying in our hotel for the weekend and was invited to the boy’s birthday party. We explained that we live in California, but they insisted that we take the party information so that if we are in town, we can attend. Eric and I are thinking about it.

Before I went to South Dakota, I was firmly of the mind that the Dakotas should merge into one state. But, now I know better. If anything, western South Dakota feels like Wyoming in a more horses than people kind of way and eastern South Dakota feels like Nebraska. South Dakota is basically two different states divided by the Missouri River. On the western side of the river, you have Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, ranches and people who think that they are part of the American west and they scoff at the easterners. On the east side of the river, you see more cows and corn than you can count, the bugs hit the windshield so fast that it sounds like rain, and the people think that they are Midwesterners and scoff at the westerners. And you see people from everywhere in the world in South Dakota visiting Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. I mean in South Dakota we saw a car with a license plate from American Samoa. Then, you go north to North Dakota and everything changes again. First, no cows and lots and lots of farms with corn. We did not see a whole lot of North Dakota just the bit north of the South Dakota border and south of Fargo. Fargo is way nicer than I thought that it would be even though it is the least visited state in the nation. The people dress way better than I thought that they would and later we would realize that they dress better than they do in Chicago, but that is a story for another posting. It could be that because Fargo is just across the Red River from Moorhead, Minnesota. Between Fargo’s North Dakota State University and the five colleges in Moorhead, the Fargo area is not at all like it was in the eponymous movie and has more of a college town vibe. In Fargo, I discovered that its Lutheran Social Services Organization settles refugees from all over the world in Fargo – I am talking places like Burundi, Somalia, Liberia, Bhutan, etc. proving once again that as Cece said almost every day of our trip, “There is a lot of room in this country.” She also always said “America is the beautiful.” Both of which are true.

Now, the excitement was starting to build for Sarah because our next stop would be the Mall of America, where we would see the oddest thing that we saw during the entire trip. The Mall of America is a mere four hours from Fargo and to encourage me to get there as quickly as possible, Sarah set a timer and escalating cash penalties for taking more than five hours to get to Bloomington. So the challenge was on because you know that I like to stop when the feeling hits me.