Nebraska, back to Iowa, South Dakota (finally)

Hello! Last night we had a yucky hotel and the internet wasn't working... so I'm still catching you guys up on days and days ago. It was so amazing hooking up to wi-fi tonight and seeing all your comments, I can't express how fun it is to blog while on the trip- thank you for bearing with me! :) Tonights post covers a less-goofy day, this was day 5:

Nebraska really was very pretty, and we thought we would be driving through it on I-80, but when we left our hotel in the morning to find some summer clothes (we had packed all winter gear for our trip and by then it was quite obvious we weren't going to hit weather under 80 degrees) we actually left our maps in the hotel room. At the mall we went back to AAA for a new selection of maps with our revised destinations... we plotted a detour up to Rapid City heading toward Yellowstone then down to Salt Lake City. (This has since been re-revised)

This meant with our new map we left Nebraska and I-80 and went back through Iowa to get on I-90 through the length on South Dakota. This became the big day of no fun; it was hot and we were told it would be about 4 hours to Rapid City. In fact it was more than 9 hours with lots of construction along the road. Also, this was billboard country, and by the 3rd hour zooming past the bajillionth Wall Drug sign I think both of us were seriously regretting the I-90 choice. (complain, complain) Anyway, the rest stops in SD have these beautiful sculptures and we sure did find a gem- a rest stop complete with "scenic overlook":

The rest stop area on the map:

I took a lot of pictures there considering it was the one cool thing that happened that day (wink).
I'll be uploading all the Flickr stuff when finally in Oregon. Here was the view:

with a sign that said "BEWARE POISONOUS SNAKES"... guess I should go get P off the grass then...


It had been two very long days of driving by the time we really were offered our first taste of complete awe, entering Rapid City. South Dakots (other than the overlook) had been flat, flat, flat. Right as the sun was coming down, however, while we could see the city lights off in the distance, we must have turned a bend or gone over a hill because all of a sudden the earth just opened up all around us in these incredible rolling canyons. Covered in grass and shrubs, they glowed green in the sunset. My camera batteries had died, but fair enough- it was just the inspiration we needed to get us to the city and recuperating from a long Day5.

Just to let you know where we are at here in day 8, I'm attaching a video from several hours ago. Its a little boring and I do say a swear word at the end of it... but I just really wanted to capture our delight of driving through Montana. More soon, and again another thanks for the comments! Nighty night!