Wandering With Waddles: Midwest or bust

Traveling has been pretty easy. I hit the smoke about Bozeman, Montana and it has stayed with me. Today, in Minnesota, it is clearing off some.

Wyoming was pretty... no more mountains, and lots of straight rolling hills. I was planning to stay at a State Park, but didn't have reservations. I drove 6 miles off the highway to the park. At the entrance I was told there were probably sites available but I would have to call the reservation system to find out, and reserve a site. My phone just said Call Failed every time I tried to call, even when I was somewhere that showed I had 3 bars. I finally gave up, drove back to the highway and decided to find a motel for the night. I stopped in Moorcraft, WY to get fuel, and Trip Advisor said the Cozy Motel was rated pretty well (newest review was a year ago), so I drove to the Motel. It looked REALLY sad, and there was no place to park Waddles, AND the No Vacancy sign was out. So I continued on to Sundance, WY. and found a motel for the night. Those of you following my SPOT tracker may also have noticed that it was not working well in Wyoming. After rebooting my phone a couple times it started working again. The motel I stayed in had internet, but it was a wide-open connection so I opted not to use it to update the blog. I decided I was in a vortex while in Wyoming!

I started early yesterday, heading into South Dakota. Another smokey, pretty sunrise.

If you have been to South Dakota you may have stopped at the infamous WALL DRUG. It is hard to miss. There were at least 20 billboards (large and small) for every mile along I-90, advertising everything from cowboy boots, free coffee and donuts for newlyweds to gold mining. Pretty much anything you could possibly want. I didn't stop there.

There must be a Corvette Rally going on somewhere. At least 50 of them passed me on the highway during the day. The speed limit in Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota is 70-80 mph. Waddles and I waddled along at a lazy 60mph. The advantage of driving on the freeway, rather than 2-lane back roads, is that I don't feel like I am hold anyone up. The other interesting thing in South Dakota was there are LONG sections of freeway that are narrowed to 1 lane for construction, but nowhere did I see any work actually being done. They are clearly rebuilding and improving the roads, but no one was there! Seems odd.

And gas is much cheaper in the midwest than the west coast!

We made it across South Dakota and stayed at Blue Mounds State Park, Minnesota. It was a very nice little park. Lots of sites available (though I had to make reservations over the phone, the entrance booth was closed by the time I got there.

Another red sunrise. I wandered a little bit and saw buffalo roaming in the park, and heard lots of birds that I don't normally encounter in the west. It was nice.