Mt. Rushmore - Badlands - Minnesota

The best part about visiting Mt. Rushmore at 7:14 AM is that there likely less than 20 other tourists at the monument. We strolled the boardwalk beneath the faces (Washington, T Roosevelt, Jefferson & Lincoln) without seeing another person. The downs side was that we arrived before the museum and other attractions opened. It would have been nice to learn more about the history of the monument and its creators, but with St. Paul in our sights, we did not have time to dilly dally.

We left Rushmore for Rapid City and caught up with I-90 once again. In the 45 miles between Rapid City and Wall, we counted over 60 Wall Drug signs along the freeway. Succumbing to the pressures of advertising we followed the ubiquitous billboards to the famed drug store.

Two sides of a city street are lined with Wall Drug and hangers on selling trinkets and other western plains paraphernalia.

We escaped Wall with an ice coffee and strawberry smoothy and headed south along the highway looping through the Badlands National Park.

Entering the park was as spectacular as I remember when Dad and I came through in 1999.

Unfortunately our visit this time was just as brief.

We made several stops for pictures along the way, but an hour and a half later we were out of the park and riding the I-90 ribbon over the rolling hills of South Dakota.

The final ~600 miles were uneventful aside from a strong wind storm blowing south to north. It pushed the trailer around a bit more than we were comfortable with. By the time we connect with I-35 north our then tail wind had lost most of its intensity.

By 10:30pm we arrived at Stacy's grandma's house at last...safe sound and glad to be out of the car.

...next up 14 hours in a plane to Shanghai... stay tuned.