Seattle to Detroit up US Highway 12!

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

Well, I guess that's a pretty good set of directions! I guess the biggest thing to note is that there isn't a sign, you'll just see some metal sculptures and you'll know you're there.

And at the very least, I bet if I ask the locals, someone will point it out for me. It should be a snap finding it. (crosses fingers)

Anyway, day one is complete - I got a later start than I wanted, so I went directly to Yakima via I-90 and picked up US 12 from there. Heck, as it is, I rolled into Lewiston at 9 PM, so it's good that I took a more direct route.

The rental car I have - oh my god, what a dream! Brand new - like only 15 miles on it when I picked it up. It's like driving a cloud, so smooth and quite and dead sexy. Ok, the gas milage isnt the best (about 25-ish miles to the gallon, I'd estimate), but it's great in every other way! And it's got a sun roof! I'm going to be so sad to go back to my old (fine, but very basic) ride after this.

I'm probably not going to post a ton of photos to my Flicker account since the laptop is really tiny, but I can manage one a day. Here's a stunning sunset just past Walla Walla.

Anyway, more later - if the next hotel has internet! :)

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

So, tonight I'm in Big Lumber (Big Thunder? Big Timber? Something like that), Montana. Things went a little askew when the place I was originally targeting for my motel tonight was booked solid for a Rodeo! And of course those were the only two motels in 40 miles, so no room at the inn for me. So I'm staying at a Super 8 for twice the price, because it was getting on to 10:30 by the time I rolled into town.

Not much on the itinerary today, I swung by a dam - but I caught them just before they were ready. The tours start tomorrow, the films weren't set up and the only person on staff was a volunteer on her first day! Sadly the detour was just long enough that I didn't get to see the old prision. Ah well.

When I got into Montana, I was up in the mountains and stuff. I was all "Sure it's pretty, but Big Sky Country doesn't have sky much bigger than back home." And then I got out of the mountains, came around a corner, past a hill and WHAM, yeah, that's some mighty big sky.

So tomorrow I get to push on into North and South Dakota, where all the really fun stuff starts showing up.

Oh, and here's the photo of the day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonyjcase/3555250855/

When I saw the sign, I just had to. . . .

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

So today I got out of Montana (my god that state is HUGE flat), through North Dakota and halfway through South Dakota, before stopping in Mobridge, just past the Missouri river. I was very disappointed in the local drive in theater. The one thing I had to check out on my whirlwind Americana tour and it it was kind of a dump. I was hoping for all retro and neon and 50's, and it was a plain white sign with no retro to it whatsoever. To make matters worse, it was showing Night at the Museum 2. If it had been Terminator or Star Trek, I would have gone - but this? I know nothing about it and never saw the first one. Phooey!

Todays highlights was Sitting Bull's grave (where a bunch of Indian Teenagers were hanging out drinking beer and smoking the peace pipe, who rolled their eyes at the white devil intruding on their ceremony and split) and the Grand River Museum - which featured Cowboys, Indians AND Dinosaurs! And a cowboy RIDING a dinosaur. How could I not stop? Of course the display on how Noah saved the Dinosaurs on the Dinosaurs (complete with little diorama with plastic dinosaur toys boarding an ark) may be not entirely accurate - scientifically speaking, but it was a nice touch.

The place in Mobridge is a little mom-n-pop motel called the Mo-Rest Motel, a much preferable business to frequent than the Big Faceless Cooperations and their vastly overpriced alternatives (Bah! A Pox on you Super 8! The breakfast this morning sucked and was full of nasty corn starches and chemicals and whatnot. Blech.) Of course, this place had a bible on the desk, open to the "Accept Jesus or burn in hell" chapter - a very odd recruitment tool - but considering I just saw Noah saving the Dinosaurs, not THAT unusual, I guess.

Anyway onward and upwards! Next stop: the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota!

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

Bah! How vexing - the first night the hotel doesn't have Internet. And all my efforts at wardriving have failed - everything I found was either not wanting to connect, rejecting my uploads (probably too big) or like Hampton Hotels, that needed a special code from when you checked in. If I had the internet, I could probably find a key generator or something - but then I'd have the Internet. Ah, catch-22! So, I did find an unsecure connection - I'm posting this while standing in the parking lot of tr he bowling ally across the street from the motel. Ain't technology grand?

I touched down in Eau Claire, Wisconsin - a couple of miles short of my desired 500 miles a day - Downtown Minni polis is confusing as all get out, and once you get swept off onto an exit from the freeway, you're lost in a black hole of twisty turny streets. Seattle, as crazy as the downtown layout is, has the curtosy to be more or less lengthwise, squeezed in between the sound and lake Washington. The Twin Cities has no such restraint and went all crazy with the layout and interstates and whatnot. It's a madhouse! A madhouse!

Speaking of sprawl, its interesting how - well, if you start at the south end of Tacoma and go north, you can make it all the way to the north end of Everett without leaving tightly packed communities. That's what - 100 miles, give or take? Here you have an instant drop-off, from city to BAM! woods and farms - at least of the strip of land I*'ve seen along highway 12. You can go from nothing to wall to wall in the blink of an eye.

Thing's I wont miss from the trip: the singular choices of radio stations. Sometimes I get stations that play both country AND western. That or the religious stations, pimping god to whomever was unlucky enough to tune in. Of course the AM band is fun, when the sun goes down and the ionosphere calms down - I get stations from ALL over. I didn't think that there was enough mariachi polka to fill a radio station. Guess I was wrong.

Oh, and I wont miss the billboards with "Please dont abort me!" with the fetsus (feti?) on display. I swear, it seems that EVERY town had one somewhere in their proviance. While I dont care what people think one way or another - 300 of the damn things is a bit overboard. And no, that's not an exaggeration, There must have been one every 10 miles. Sheesh.

Lets see, so what did I see today. Well, there was the biggest chicken in the world in Delaney (not all that big), the old time train depot (closed for the season, opening tomorrow! Curses!), the a bit of Downtown Minneapolis, as I said - and oh, yes. . . the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota!

I've been to London and Paris, I've seen great works by the masters - the crown jewels, the Venus De'Milo, the Mona Lisa - and I can say with all authority, that they are peanuts to the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. I can cease my travels forever more, for I have seen the Apex of creation!

Well I guess there still is Wall Drug left to go. . . .

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

So today's adventures included a brush with the law (and my lead foot), an upside-down white house, several wrong turns, a missing memory card, a Trojan horse you can water slide through and the Forevertron (almost).

So I have seen the event horizon of tacky, and it is called the Wisconsin Dells. Holy smokes, Water Slide parks, roller coasters, haunted house-like attractions, life sized paul bunyans and oversized muffler men. The winner has to be the Noah's Ark water slide park. Now you would think that the park would be all biblical and featuring water slides two-by-two and the like, right? WRONG! It would feature a surfing alligator wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and rides like "Black Anaconda" and "The Time Warp" (no information on if a jump to the left or a step to the right required for the ride). And of course the full sized replica of the Roman Coliseum was a Nice touch.

Of course I had to indulge in the Upside-Down White House, a building built like - well, like a white house that had been turned completely upside down, both outside and in. The inside was similar to what a radio station would put together for Halloween, blasts of air from hidden jets, black lights, holograms, things that go "Boo" at you and that sort of thing - but with a presidential theme. Kind of cool, but not exactly the highlight of the trip.

I did manage to stop by the Forevertron but curse Memorial Day! The park was closed! I got some pictures of the cool sculptures in the yard, but nothing of the Forevertron itself. Phooey!

And then there was me and my lead foot. Fortunately the copper took pity on the stupid tourist who had zoned out on the deserted back road and wound up doing 12 over the speed limit. Then again, I must have been small potatos to some of the low flying jets he sees come through there, so he threw me back. Either way, I got off with The Talking Too and no ticket. Whew.

Despite the layover with The Law, I was still way ahead of schedule. So I'm in Prairie Du Chien, still in Wisconsin, but RIGHT on the Mississippi, a stones throw away from Iowa. I was thinking of trying to pick up a couple more states in my quest to visit (even just briefly) all 50, but it would have taken way too much time. So I'll head up to Highway 14 in the morning, stop at the Spam Museum, and hopefully winding up in Mitchell, smack in the center of South Dakota.

[PNW Judy]

I love me a TTT (tacky tourist trap)! Sounds like this place is full of 'em. I also need to do more driving in the Bible Belt (didn't know it went that far north). Between Noah/dinosaurs and those billboards....wow, just wow! I've seen a few billboards like that in Utah but not so many packed together.

I'm glad you're having a great trip. Bad luck with places being closed was offset by the kind cop, eh?

Keep your reports coming. I like your humor and it's fun to hear how far you're getting. You're making pretty good time.

I'll also look forward to more photos when you get back.

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

I love me a TTT (tacky tourist trap)! Sounds like this place is full of 'em. I also need to do more driving in the Bible Belt (didn't know it went that far north). Between Noah/dinosaurs and those billboards....wow, just wow! I've seen a few billboards like that in Utah but not so many packed together.

Oh, I hadnt seen the worse of it until this morning! I wish I had stopped and taken a picture. Imagine a HUGE sign that said "The Pill = DEATH!" in the window of a house, and a light up plastic Baby Jesus on the roof of the porch (kind of like what you might see around christmas, with the light up lawn decorations in the 70's). This place made everything along the way seem subtle by comparison.

Also, I wonder if those billboards were something unique to Highway 12. Coming back on 14, I see them every once in a while, but not quite in such great numbers. Or perhaps I'm just numb to them by now. :)

I'll also look forward to more photos when you get back.

Yeah, I have a TON of photos, but the internet conectivity is so spotty and I want to sort through them first - so it'll just be the Photo of the Day for the moment.

Anyway, so a quick update from last night. After I hit send, I made a discovery about the motel I was staying at. While it was a nice enough mom-n-pop place, clean small and quaint - it was also about 30 feet from the main line train tracks through town, and up and down the Mississippi! You remember that old I Love Lucy episode where they all head to California and stop at this run-down motel and the whole set violently shakes as trains constantly race past? Well, this place wasn't QUITE that bad, but every hour and a half, you got the rrrrRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMmmmmm. . . . as a train rolled past. No crashing and clanging as they did the switching, and no horns - but it was still LOUD!

And there was a gas station/truck stop right next door. Throughout the night, it was nice and quite - but then at six at the morning, they decided to turn the muzak on nice and loud! While I like the Beatles as the next fella, not an hour before I'm suppose to get up!

Anyway, today's stops included the Spam Museum - which was actually pretty interesting (and filled with vikings, of course), and a climb up Hermann the German ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_the_German) in New Ulm and a drive up the Mississippi.

Oh, and I saw my first Wall Drug billboard just this evening. I feel like a real road trip traveler, like a rite of passage or something! Today, I am a MAN!

The one thing I dont get is why the gas in Wisconsin and Minnesota is so dang expensive! It's running about 2.50 a gallon, while over in South Dakota, it's only 2.20-2.30 a gallon. Fortunately I was putting JUST enough gas in to keep going until I got to SD, so the road trip hasn't broken the bank.

I'm currently in a town called Huron over in east central South Dakota. I'm a bit short of my 500 miles a day goal, but it works out fine, since the morning's drive will give put me right on schedule for the opening of the Corn Palace in Mitchel in the morning, and puts me right on track to see the old cold war silo just south of Wall. So - next stop, the Badlands!

[PNW Judy]

I'm surprised nobody erected an Eric the Red statue. :)

Congrats on your rite of passage. Your train story made me think of My Cousin Vinny....a classic.

Oh, the Corn Palace is gonna be fun! Enjoy.

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

Oh, the Corn Palace is gonna be fun! Enjoy.

The Corn Palace was a blast! What's the Corn Palace, I hear someone in the back row ask? Take a high school basketball gym, dress it up a bit with flags and then cover it with corn! I mean physically staple and nail corn on the cob in a mural. It's actually really cool looking - I just wish the weather was better so my pictures didn't turn out like crap.

The bulk of today's travels was down I-90, which I've been trying to avoid for the most part, but I do have to admit that there's a certain charm to the deluge of billboards. That's something I've not seen elsewhere, a truly South Dakota feature. Some might decry them as ugly, but I think it's a quaint slice of Americana. And holy smokes do they pimp Wall Drug! Seriously, there was one billboard every 5 miles or so for over 300 miles! No wonder the owner is fighting the proposed tax increase on Billboards. Of the 3,500 or so the state has on record, 3,000 of them must be Wall Drug's.

Speaking of tourism and pimping themselves, I do have to hand it to the SD Tourist Board. They have it down to a science. The rest stop - in the middle of the state, mind you - had a fully staffed office with Books on Tape tours, brocures and maps coming out of the yang. Of all the states I've been too, they're the most on their game.

Anyway, the ICBM silo tour is hella cool - it's like theGhost Subway Stations from East Berlin, but in reverse. The command bunker is exactly like it was when it was decommissioned, right down to the same salt in the salt shakers on the dinner table. Heck, they still had an issue of Byte magazine - I haven't seen one of those in 20 years now! The bunker looks not too dissimilar to the opening of War Games, chairs on a track, keys you have to turn and so on. Now what made the trip really cool, and sadly, you'll probably never get the same tour guide as I did, but the ranger had served in that very same bunker 30 years ago - his finger was on The Button that would blow up the world. So he had a fountain of insider knowledge that was second to none.

What really, REALLY made trip cool was that one of the other guests on the tour had worked on the guidance systems of the missiles, and had serviced the silos that the bunker was in charge of. So while the Ranger had all the nuts and bolts about the launch systems down, he didn't deal with the silo end of things - but what he didn't known, the other guy did. He went on in great detail about the security of the silo, what he had to do to service the rockets - all sorts of things. It was a brilliant stroke of luck, a cold war extravaganza!

Then I got to wall, which is as tacky as kitch, as full of tchochkies as you might imagine - and more so! Yeah, it's a completely useless tourist trap, but it's a charming tourist trap.

So - flip side of my encounter with The Law a couple of days ago? Today I was out shooting some pictures with my tripod, set up in the middle of the Wall parking strip down the middle of the street, between a SUV and a motorcycle. A few moments later, some big burley Hells Angel comes flying out of the bar across from Wall Drug, shouting that if I touch his bike's antenna again, he'll fucking break me in two - and then proceeded to stand there, all threatening and intimidating while I went about my business. While I'm not 100% certain that I didn't brush his antenna, I'm pretty sure I didn't touch it - but then I wasn't about to argue with a man as big as King Kong with the disposition of Godzilla. In the words of C-3PO, I let the Wookiee win. . .

Oh, and lets play a lightning round of "What Stupid Thing Tony Did Today"! Here, see if you can spot the stupid thing: Down to half a tank of gas, I stop by the local Wall service station and proceeded to start pumping gas. While the gas was going, I went to get the squeegee to scrap the dead bugs off the windshield. While I was doing that, the guy from Idaho across the way started chatting me up, asking where from Washington I was from and showing off his laser guided cruse control and generally chatting. After that, I got in the car and started to drive away.

If you said "He forgot to put the hose back on the pump!" you'd be a winner!!! So yeah, I drive away and BOIIING! off comes the hose from the pump. So I sheepsly pulled over, went inside and completely failed to explain myself throughly, had the clerk say "Dont worry, we'll handle it" and slunk out of there with my tail between my legs. I'll claim that I was still rattled from my encounter with the Hells Angel as an excuse. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

The last stop was the Badlands - stunningly gorgeous looking and yes, extremely bad lands. Lewis and Clark must have had balls of steel to traverse those hills and valleys. I would have taken one look and headed back to St Louis. Hopefully all the pictures turn out, that was some amazing scenery.

So I wound up staying in Wall - and no, that's not some kind of nostalgia wish fulfillment or anything - just that Wall is the center point (more or less) for everything I want to see tomorrow. The nostalgia wish fulfillment is just an added bonus.

[Tony J Case, Super Genius]

Today's going to be short, since I'm hella tired today. Today, I managed to work my way through the Black Hills. Still no idea why they're called that tho - they looked pretty green to me.

First stop was The Reptile Gardens, an exhibit filled to the brim with snakes and alligators and giant turtles and a Bald Eagle (?). They had one of the biggest alligators in the world there - not quite 20 feet long (19 and 10 inches - but with teeth like that, who's counting).

Rushmore was cool, but over-rated. It really wasn't worth the 10 bucks to get in, but I managed to snap a couple of cool pics. The Crazy Horse emolument, on the other hand - was hella cool, and I didn't mind the 10 bucks to get in there. It's a labor of love, one man carving away a mountain (well, until he died and his kids too over). No federal funding, just donations and ticket sales. It's nowhere near done and probably wont be for DECADES, but it's got way more heart and soul than four dead presidents.

Then I drove around the Black Hills, running into all kinds of wildlife - elk, deer, prairie dogs, water Buffalo. That pretty much killed the rest of the day, since driving through the parks was hella slow.

Sadly, that meant I had to cut the underground waterfall visit. Which really means I need to get back sometime REAL soon.

Oh - and I really, really hate well water. Blech, that stuff tastes foul.

Anyway, onwards from Wall tomorrow. Next will be Deadwood (hopefully), the Center of the United States, and an alien abduction at Devils Tower. . . .