Prairie companions

   When we left Minneapolis this morning it was 51 degrees and cloudy; my GPS took us down I-35 to almost the bottom of the state. Since we entered Minnesota at the top in Duluth, we pretty much drove the whole state by the time we crossed over into South Dakota on I-90.

   Southern Minnesota is the land of big agriculture. Farm fields (mostly corn & wheat) were enormous with heavy farm machinery everywhere. There were also major wind farms that vanished when we crossed the state border. South Dakota farms seemed smaller as we moved west with some cattle ranches mixed in. We passed by the home of Laura Ingles, of Little House on the Prairie, and Badlands National Park.

   The topography seemed to change as we crossed the Missouri River, we went a bit higher in elevation and the farms were further apart with open grasslands taking up most of the view. There were some huge fields of sunflowers and we saw some grasslands full of prairie dog mounds. We didn't know what they were until we noticed their little heads popping up.

   We stopped for lunch in Mitchell SD, famous for something called the Corn Palace, but instead we went to Ruby Tuesday's (a wise choice). It's funny to see what people were taking on the roads with them. There were lots of motor homes, some of them huge and even in the passing lane. We saw two of them towing pickup trucks behind and another towing a horse trailer. I love the idea of taking your pet on vacation, but this was major !

   We stopped for the night in Rapid City, in the foothills of the Rockies, pretty much all the way across South Dakota. It was 70 degrees and sunny when we got in; we had another time zone change in mid state so now were on Mountain time. We've driven just under 2,000 miles so far and tomorrow we'll spend the day seeing the local monuments before we head west again into Wyoming.