6/11 & 6/12
We woke up this morning and caught some more flying pancakes. Davis was nervous and kept commenting how he didn't want anyone to watch him and was worried about what would happen if you dropped a pancake. I told him they want you to, so they can feed the chipmunks, and he finally got enough courage to go after I went and caught one. After Davis and Arden went, and successfully caught pancakes, this little 3 year old girl came up to try her luck. The guy threw the pancake perfectly at her plate and she got scared and flinched and pulled her plate back so the pancake missed and fell on the floor. No problemo - the guy threw another and it landed right on her plate. After pancake time we got the RV ready and left.
We drove past Mt. Rushmore one last time and headed towards Rapid City. Once we got to Rapid City the landscape started to change to plains just like the movie Dances with Wolves. The further East we traveled after Rapid City it it was all rolling plains. Every few miles there would be a Wall Drug sign advertising free water and "5 cent coffee". I didn't plan on stopping for Wall Drug because a friend told me it was really lame, but I told Tracy about it and she said she definitely wanted to stop there. It was only a mile or two of the highway which was convenient and they had RV parking. We stopped the RV and walked a block to the store which took up a whole city block. There is one street of stores that look like an old fashioned block of stores but Wall Drug has taken over the whole one side of the block. It's probably the size of Walmart but filled with gift shop junk. A few cool things they had were hand made old fasioned donuts and an old fashioned soda fountain. Tracy bought two donuts to share and I took the kids to the soda fountain to get an old fashioned root beer float. After our feast, we walked around and bought some junk and then Tracy took the kids to get cowboy boots (we talked Davis out of the bright red ones) and then we were off.
Sioux Falls has 100,000+ people in the town so as we got closer Tracy started looking for organic food stores for Tucker (10 year old Golden Retriever) and her. They're both picky about eating organic food and please see the post from day one about forgetting Tucker's food. We found and stopped at an organic dog food store and got carryout from an organic restaurant. After picking up our food we drove past Sioux Falls just like Chevy Chase in European Vacation and Big Ben. "Look kids, Sioux Falls".
We arrived at the Sioux Falls KOA in the early evening. This KOA was way smaller than the Mt. Rushmore KOA and reminded me of an old school RV park. There was a freezing cold pool nobody was swimming in and it was clear this was a stopover point in between destinations for car travelers. The one amenity the kids were excited about were renting those recumbent bikes KOA calls "banana bikes". I was also excited to have a little distance from the kids. I gave them $20 and told them to scram - everyone's a winner. After an hour of the kids on the banana bikes and Tracy and I sitting on the patio finishing the bottle of wine we bought last night, we took showers and got the kids in their bunks. Davis watched the Stanley Cup in his bunk on my Ipad while Arden watched a kid movie and then we put them to bed.
We forgot to do favorite part of the day so here are my assumptions:
Tracy - turning on the air conditioner
Matt - realizing work is totally squared away and my team is aweosme
Arden - getting cowboy boots
davis - catching pancakes at breakfast
We slept in Thursday morning which was nice. After slowly getting everyone out of bed we got the RV ready, and hit the road at 9:00 am for an eight hour drive. It was really windy like in Wyoming, throughout the rest of South Dakota. It was uneventful through Minnesota except the landscape looked more and more like IL. Corn fields everywhere. Once we made it to Lacrosse, WI were were impressed by how beautiful it was. We crossed the Mississippi River and the kids pointed out that is looked purple. Once again I was reminded of Mr. Clark W. Griswold -
http://youtu.be/hUNMmSbkAG8
Growing up in Northern Illinois, we went to Wisconsin a lot, so once we were in Wisconsin I could feel how close we were to my sister's house. The only problem is Lacrosse, WI is really far from northern IL. 212 miles to be exact. Three and a half hours later we pulled onto Giant Oaks Road and there were Caden and Austin in the road waiting for us. I backed the RV down their driveway, which was no easy feat, seeing it is windy and I would estimate 400' long. I got out and could barely walk. My hips and knees felt siezed. Eight hours is my maximum one day driving time. The kids were all so excited and so were Tracy and I. I love being at my sisters house. She has this awesome house on 2.5 acres in the country and the kids get to run around and have fun the whole time. It's such a settling feeling parking the RV and knowing we could relax. We sat in the RV for 15 minutes or so and my sister dutifully had a cold Miller High Life for me. I deserved a champagne of beers after eight hours of driving. I went down and showered after dinner and felt great. The kids went to bed without a peep and Tracy and I fell asleep soon thereafter around 10 which is 9 MT. My nephews Austin (13 next month) and Caden (10.5) slept in the RV which is hilarious to me. I told them it was going got get cold as the low temp was 54 for the night. They woke up when their Dad went to work at 5:30, and came in the house because they were freezing. First thing Caden said when I saw him in the morning was "it was awesome" and "it was cold".
Favorite part of the day:
Greg - that we're all here safe and healthy and he wasn't at work
Colleen - making dinner and grilling out with family
Austin - us coming to the house
Caden - setting up the beds
Arden - getting off the torture bus
Davis - the backhand he had when we played hockey last night before bed
Tracy - being able to spread out her stuff all over Colleen's basement
Matt - getting here safely and arden calling the RV the torture bus
Tracy and Colleen keep interrupting me as I finish this blog post as they want me to write that Colleen had a home cooked meal on the table when we got there, Tracy already washed all our dirty laundry and colleen had all the beds, etc. set up for us when we got here. Kudos to you girls!
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