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Published: September 21st 2008
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We left the stunning Yellowstone National Park behind and continued our long drive east. We headed out of the east side of the park, up and over the Sylvan Pass through part of the Rocky Mountains. This road was supposed to be the most scenic entrance into the park, but is often closed due to snow fall and avalanches. Luckily that did not affect us and it certainly was pretty spectacular, going through the pass and hugging the side of the mountains as we wound our way back down again. The only dampener was the fact that we again saw signs for forest fires. The road remained open as it was being used by the emergency services, however as we got closer the sky was thick with cloud and we could see parts glowing orange. The fire must have been huge as the smoke went on for miles and miles...
As we drove east, we left the Rockies behind and made our way into the flat prairie lands that seem to go on forever. We were heading across on the I-90 freeway for over 700 miles as we passed through Wyoming and South Dakota into Minnesota. This route took us
past a few places of interest so we could break up the journey a bit, thankfully! The first stop was Devils Tower, which is a huge, 1,267ft monolith jutting out of the otherwise pretty much flat landscape. It is perhaps more famous for the scene in the 70's film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We didn't see any UFO's, but it sure looked strange as we could see it from miles away. We enjoyed a walk around the bottom of the rock, but there was not a lot else to do there unless you want to climb it too!
From here, we headed to Mount Rushmore, one of the most famous attractions in the whole of the USA, and the image of the 4 ex-presidents carved into the granite rock is famous the world over. The heads of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Roosevelt are all about 60ft tall, and the sculpture apparently represents the first 150 years of the history of the United States. It's all a bit surreal really, and it would probably mean more to people from the States than us English, but it was still worth seeing as we were so close, and it was
impressive with these 4 heads towering above us looking out over the countryside.
We stopped the night in the town of Wall, a small town in South Dakota, with nothing anywhere for miles other than prairie and farm land. In the evening we had a look around the town, mostly all centred down one road. The town is famous for the Wall Drug store, which opened as a small pharmacy in 1931, but as business was slow in the small town they started advertising on the nearby road that they were giving away free ice water to people passing, and it now receives approx. 2 million people annually... and advertises on the Interstate for about 200 miles in either direction! They now serve coffee for 5c and still serve free ice water. The place is massive and has taken over most of the main road in the town, with different parts selling clothes and gifts to the passing tourists. There's also a cafe there, known for very good but cheap meals, so ideal for a couple of travellers like us!
After our nights rest in Wall, we headed into the Badlands National Park. Badlands was created by an
inland sea thousands of years ago and called Badlands because it is such difficult terrain to negotiate through. The surrounding area is more of the same vast prairie lands until all of a sudden the land drops away into a mass of rock crevices, spikes and bizarre formations, easy to see why it was named the Badlands! We had a drive around the scenic loop road, stopping to admire the views across the landscape. There have been a number of fossils found in the park, although no dinosaurs, but the so-called 'Big Pig Dig' had already closed down so there was nothing much happening while we were there.
After visiting the park, we drove on to the town of Mitchell for the night. There was not much in town, and basically was just another small American town that we would spend the night in, but the “must-see” we had read about was a Corn Palace, the only one of it's kind in the world. This is in fact a whole building decorated with several different colours of dried corn, and every year they change the design... it really must be seen to be believed!!!
From here we drove
out of South Dakota and headed to Minneapolis. We were trying to avoid big cities but this was kind of on the way and also where we found the biggest shopping mall in the US. So we spent a few days in the area, wandering around the massive mall and doing a bit of shopping. We also found time to have a look around the city one day and we had a walk down the Mississippi River and through some of the parks that line the river banks in the centre. We were lucky really, as the Republican convention was actually starting in St Paul, across the river from Minneapolis, a couple of days after we were there and we are sure it would have been mad to be in the city at that time!
We left Minneapolis to cloudy skies, the first time we'd had cloudy skies for weeks! Our plan was to meet up with friends that live near Philadelphia the following weekend so we had a few days to make the journey, so we split the journey up and went via the Great Lakes. Our first stop was Milwaukee, on the banks of Lake Michigan. We
didn't stop for long, but just enough to walk along the lake near the fabulous Art Museum, shaped like a massive yacht, watching much more energetic people running, cycling and roller-blading past us.
We continued our drive east to Ohio, but along the way we drove right through Chicago, and as neither of us have been to Chicago before, we decided to stop for an hour and grab some lunch. Still we can hardly say we have been to Chicago now, as we really did run around the very centre of the city quickly, down to Lake Michigan and then headed back to the car. It was so expensive to park the car that we could only afford about an hour anyway! After our mad rush around Chicago, we found our way back onto the freeway and headed into Toledo in Ohio. This town was on Lake Erie, so another one of the Great Lakes we could tick off the list... or so we thought! We stayed outside Toledo to get a cheap room for the night, and drove in towards the lake the following morning, to a state park on the edge of the lake so we were
expecting a nice shore front like we had seen on Lake Michigan. However, we were a bit disappointed when we got to the lake and it was right next to massive factories and what looked like a refinery, which all spoilt the view really! We probably just picked the wrong place to go, but we didn't have time to find a more scenic place so we left the lake and started our way towards Philadelphia.
It was only quick trip to the Great Lakes and we really should have spent longer here, but that will have to wait for another time! We had already covered about 1800 miles from Yellowstone to Toledo, and our final destination of Philadelphia was 'only' about another 530 miles away, and we were looking forward to meeting up with our friends.
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