From South Dakota to Minnesota

The ride from Sturgis to Sioux Falls on the I-90 was long and uneventful, except for one stop. This again was prairie land with miles and miles of grain crops and grassland. The one interesting stop was at a small town called Wall and here we visited Wall Drug. The only reason we stopped there was that for miles along the I-90 there were dozens of small billboards telling motorists of the things that could be procured at Wall Drug - almost everything. It turns out this store is now a major attraction and up to 20,000 visitors stop there daily. It started as a small town drug store in the 1930's which struggled for business until the owners had the bright idea of attracting people to deviate from I-90 by offering them free iced iced water, and advertising this fact with a series of billboards along the road. The idea worked and Wall Drug is now a huge and amazing store where almost anything can be obtained from meals to western wear to jewellery to motorcycle leathers.

Continuing to Sioux Falls, we struck some gusty winds which did blow us around a bit. We initially travelled at the posted 75mph (about 120kph or so) but were forced to slow - especially when close to the big semis which tend to displace a lot of air.

We stopped at Sioux Falls for a couple of days as the weather was predicted to deteriote with thunderstorm warnings issued. These did not eventuate but we took the time to look around the city and visit museums and the butterfly house. We also popped into the Sioux Falls YMCA where the previous CEO gave us a quick tour.

Leaving Sioux Falls, we rode into Minnesota. As a hint, we have discovered that it is almost always worth while stopping and talking to the staff at the information centres. Mostly, these are located on major highways just across the state lines. A really nice lady at the Minnesota Information Office suggested we visit the Spam Museum in Austin - not something we would normally contemplate. As the name suggests, this is a museum dedicated to Spam - something of a US food icon - and their sometimes tongue in cheek approach made it pretty interesting.

We road the scenic byway through southern Minnesota where the countryside is beautiful. We stopped for gas at Rose Creek - a town/village of just 400 inhabitants and is exactly what we often picture a small US rural town to be like. It was really picturesque and we both felt that it was a place we'd like to live in. This time of the year - the start of Fall/Autumn, this part of the country is popular on weekends as city dwellers come out to see the changing colours and to ride the mountain bike trails. It is also Amish country. As a result, the first two motels we tried were full so we drove on to another small town - Chatfield. Here we had the worst accommodation experience of our journey so far. The Val A Lodge (aka the Chatfield Hotel) is a goodly sized place which looks fine on the outside and to be fair doesn't look too bad on the inside. It is run by Lloyd, an elderly gentleman who quoted us a rate of US$94 - a pretty high rate for a small town establishment. The room we had was quite big but had nothing other than a bed, a TV and a bathroom. No coffee making facilities, no fridge, no microwave, no internet. There was a common area in the hallway which had a snack vending machine, a microwave that didn't work and a coffee machine. We think we were the only guests (we checked in at around 4.30) though some others checked in later. Ric turned on the coffee machine but when he went to get the coffee, the coffee pot was gone! He asked Lloyd about it and it turns out Lloyd had got upset that Ric had turned on the machine as it was set up to be turned on the following morning. When Ric asked about coffee, Lloyd told him to go up the road to a convenience store where he could get a cup of coffee. Needless to say, Ric was unimpressed with this and told Lloyd so. Lloyd was unflinching but did let us have a cup of coffee from the pot he has rescued from the common area. Shame on you Lloyd for charging premium rates for sub-par accommodation and especially for being such a mean spirited old man. Lloyd had lost an arm at some point so Ric immediately referred to him as the one-armed bandit.

The following day, we visited two cave systems - the Mystery Cave in a state park and the privately owned Niagara Cave. Both were really interesting but unfortunately, our little camera is not equipped to take good photos in such conditions so we cannot show the true majesty of these structures. We then headed towards Wisconsin - a state Jenny had wanted to see - via Harmony. Harmony is a small town with apparently a large Amish population. Amish were not thick on the ground the day we went through (it was Sunday). Ric, the ex-reconniassance man - put his tracking skills to work. While we saw all manner of dead critters on the road (as we usually do) there were no signs of the Amish. No buggy tracks - not even horse poo.