Mount Rushmore and the Grizzly Bear Campground

I figure you all know what Mt. Rushmore looks like.

We took the detour to see it in person, but did very little picture taking. We stayed at the Grizzly Bear Campground, two miles away, in a wonderful-smelling forest. We had an omelet with farm fresh eggs when we got back from watching the ceremonial lighting of the monument. I fell asleep at the fire, and burned a hole in my sleeping bag and shirt. Ooops. That woke me up. :)

This morning though, Brian and I ran up the Mountain, while everyone else drove and took pictures and got ice-cream. It is a mountain! And it's not meant to be walked/biked. It's a rather pedestrian unfriendly highway (especially for bare feet - lots of gravel on the shoulder) but getting to the top was great! I was fairly tired on the ride...

 But clearly, the boys were tired-er.

 At Lewis and Clarke caverns, some of us went on a cavern tour, and some stayed back and played at the wonderful playground. Our laundry was hung in the shadows of some gorgeous not-yet-rockies, and dried almost instantly in the wind.

 Good night, moon!

Devil's Tower

 When we were planning this journey, we thought we would try to drive most at night, but the drive-by scenery is just far too beautiful to ignore. Here is just a typical ranch, of hundreds we keep seeing. And the sky is constantly doing amazing things. One sad thing is that the back seats of our van are extremely tinted, but we rotate shotgun per drive, by age.

 Devil's Tower is a sacred Native American place, and you can see it miles away. It is a very strange structure (completely natural) with long claw marks around its entirety. You can walk a close circle around it in about a mile. - It's huge! And we saw many rock climbers on it.

 We had lunch in great view of the "tower" and pretended to play music by the statue, a Möbius strip shaped stone, which from the correct angle looks like a puff of white smoke around the tower.  (http://jpgmag.com/photos/2601605)

 Our lunch spot (but not our lunch, of course!) was shared with these little almost-endangered prairie dogs, who had a little prairie dog town right next door. They were popping in and out of their tunnel network, looking super cute.

The Badlands

FIRST of all, the Badlands, are really GREAT!

We are so happy to have our wifi back, and that everyone is feeling better.
Our drive through the prairie is gorgeous, just open sky and South Dakota is breathtaking. The only thing remotely marring the mostly empty and natural landscape are huge billboards advertising something called "Wall Drug" the world's largest drug store, according to their advertisement. There is a new ad for them every couple hundred yards, even hundreds of miles away from there.

The badlands are DIFFERENT. You park your car and in one direction is completely flat plains, and grasses, and on the other are infinite hundreds-of-foot tall piles of mud, as far as the eye can see. Miles and miles of piles of mud.

grass on one side, badlands on the other.

the four sisters went on a hiking walk by ourselves

a tiny pile of mud

we tired agnes out!

We can see how settlers and western frontiers people must have stared to have their horses arrive here, and why they would call it the Badlands. I'm surprised there's not a whole huge settlement on the Eastern edge of the Badlands for the quitters.

We couldn't help going to Wall Drug. We got out of the Badlands park, and they said there was water and "5cent coffee" and everything else in the world we could possibly want. It's pretty big, and there was everything they advertised.

Then we wrote the Wall Drug limerick.

WALLDRUG
We stopped on the road at WALL DRUG
Where coffee was 5 cents a mug.
Some pipes made of brass
6 gallons of gas
And knick knacks too heavy to lug.

Sioux Falls and Pukwana in South Dakota

A sick morning for some, migraine etc., so we played quietly and took pictures on the prairie and created a meal of spaghetti squash and tomato sauce in the slow cooker.

We decided against taking a zero day, and headed to Sioux Falls to camp. We changed our minds!

We renamed Sioux Falls to Sewer Falls, since the smell of the entire town was awful. It turns out there is a Pork Processing Plant right near the center of town. We left as quickly as we could, but nobody felt like going further to another campground, so we settled on finding a hotel near Chamberlain, but the first two places we found were completely full.

NO VACANCIES. :(

BEAUTIFUL SUNSET anyways. :)

Al's Oasis in Pukwana, however, offered continental breakfast and a cabin for all of us, overlooking the water, and also gas and  groceries and a hot tub.

The best part? An oven, which we used to make brownies and bread. Tante LaLa got us flowers for our table, and we played cards, drank beer, and tried the various types of Wisconsin cheeses.

HALFWAY! - Mississippi River

Crossing the Mississippi River is that psychological halfway point of our journey. There are so many different ways of measuring. Car time, days, miles, number of mountains, etc.

We left J. & V.'s so early that we got to LaCrosse very early in the morning. We got strange stares from morning joggers as we unearthed our hot oatmeal in the slow cooker and brought out fruit and yogurt and hot coffee on the waterfront. And admiring stares for our yoga circle.

WE stared at Granddad's bluff right up the street from the Mississippi, which was just unbelievable. Especially as the fast moving rain cloud drove the crowds away. We admired interesting wild flowers and a 270degree view of LaCrosse and the mississippi.

Before we left Wisconsin we got into one quick last grocery store for wisconsin beer (brewed right in LaCrosse) and 10 year old cheddar. Sadly they only sold 3 year old cheddar.

It was the first time that any of us had seen any true prairie and we were facinated by the continually flattening landscape as we watched out the window of the car on our way into Kilan Woods state park, directly in a prairie across from a wind farm.

looks pretty flat, no?

Dinner was fried fresh veggies and bulgur with red lentils. You can't imagine campfire food this good!

John and Vickie's House

Rainer and Peter still have not left in the chase car. But that didn't stop us from visiting Rainer's friend  from college John in Hartland, near Milwaukee.We avoided Chicago traffic, but hit Milwaukee traffic, which and ended up at J's just in time for beef stew and beer and good company. We met M. who was enchanting and wonderfully enthousiastic about our trip, and offered to take us to the farmer's market tomorrow.

The farmers market in Waukesha (WAW-keh-shaw - i practiced pronouncing it on the way there) was unbelieveably popular and full. streets and streets of fresh produce and brewing coffee.

We got back and immediately used some currants to make currant cake.

Planning tomorrow's route to the Badlands.

A huge salad and pulled pork dinner, after V. woke up and went to her night shift for her job.

Secret Handshake Lessons

We sat around the campfire and toasted to Brian for fixing the wi-fi in the van (by running 9 miles to get a new SIM card) and to J. and V. for being great hosts.

CHEERS!

Indiana Dunes State park

It was another early morning.

We stopped at the southernmost point of Lake Michigan, at Indiana Dunes State Park. 

 The colors were not capture-able. It looked like pictures of Cancun, the water was striped teal and aqua and deep blue.

 Hot coffee made us all happier.

 Mary and Martin and Irma and Brian and Mama and Lala went for a long (9 mile) walk on the dunes. There were factories on either side of the beach that you could see in the distance. The water was cold, but inviting, however swimming was prohibited anyways.

Mary and Martin

Brian with the beached Loch-Ness monster

 In the distance we could see Chicago, but only if I really cooked (read: digitally enhanced) the picture could you make out the outline of the city on the horizon.

We were worried about Chicago traffic to John's house, so we left early afternoon after an amazing onion pancake lunch cooked in a frying pan over a propane stove. The enormous crowd of beach goers were jealous.

The trick we learned: Arrive at beaches before life-guarding times. They are void of crowds, and the early morning light is just amazing.

Canatara Park on the edge of Lake Huron in Sarnia, ONTARIO

Oh the Great Lakes are so unexpectedly beautiful.

We left Gise's at some really-really-really early time in the morning. I have only vague recollections, since I don't really wake up in the morning, but I have some blurry photographic evidence. You'll just have to believe that this is facing east.

We stopped at Lake Huron just shy of the US border, so that we could spend some last canadian dollars on some hot coffee and bagels. It was, after all, breakfast time. This is what we found:

We played music on the beach, took a family photo on the lifeguard chair (I'll share it when martin shares it with me) and even went for a swim. Glorious.

Eventually we had to continue on our way and set up camp. It was a beautiful campsite in Ionia State Reservation.

BUUUT 

the 

BUUUGS!

We hid inside our tents and did silly things.

Cut nails

take pictures

play cards.

GISE and FRITZ's house in CANADA

Gise's house was a lovely spot to stop.

"First things first," said Gise, "everybody jump in the pool." from whence, with no cameras, we watched the incredible Canadian sunset.
Then fresh salad and herbs and cauliflower and rice and wine and beer and water for dinner.

Brian and Irma and family were weak-willed and stayed inside in the living-room.

The view we awoke to:

that's our van in the background behind the truck

morning bread baking

everything was beautiful and handmade and delicious.

Fritz had a lot of work to do, and Michael and Hanh were also pretty busy, but Gise took the time to show us around the farm, and Fritz even took a break from work and gave Henry a ride in the tractor, that he got to steer "himself." Theodore was just not-shy enough to step into the tractor.

At the farm, Gise only found x-small and xx-large eggs. The small ones all had little tiny yolks. The large ones all were double yoked.

Note the difference. :)

We had them for dinner outside while the children played on the lawn until they were tired out. How wonderful.