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Published: December 22nd 2010
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Our journey started in a Holiday Inn, in Rapid City, just 30 miles north east of Mount Rushmore.
We woke up at 8.30am and were ready to leave and check out by 10am. It was snowing the night before, so we had to defrost the car.
Fortunately we had cleared out the car, so the car was clean which was a nice change.
The day started out cloudy, but by the time we were ready to leave, the sky was clear and light blue, with a strong winter sun.
My first impressions of Mount Rushmore were surreal. I have been used to seeing it on television, on the internet and in the media. I felt slightly freaked out and thought it was quite creepy, but the mountain was amazing.
We visited the gift shot, bought our postcards and spoke to an overly enthusiastic American park ranger who loved to talk.
We were quick to leave after meeting him, and drove away from Mount Rushmore.
The next car fault would soon emerge as a warning light came on the dashboard to warn us about our tyre pressure.
We pulled up at the next gas station, filled up the tyres
with air - practicing my car repair skills - and headed for the Badlands National Park.
It was an 80 mile drive through an interesting scenic drive; the road meandered directly through a snow covered rocky landscape. We came to the Badlands National Park, the only way through without turning back for 50 miles.
We paid $15 for a 10 minute drive and felt slightly ripped off. It was nice, but certainly not the nicest drive we'd taken and probably not worth the money.
We drove a further 300 miles across South Dakota, there was NOTHING. The road was completely straight, we drove 4 hours and saw only flat snow covered land.
The main entertainment was the jokes we kept telling about South Dakota, and how it is in the middle of nowhere.
The rock/metal radio station we were listening to provided some humorous adverts - including one that said "South Dakota is a wonderful place to live.. if you like to hunt fish."
And then the fact that there was a fertiliser advert, "only in South Dakota would you find cow maneur advertised on the radio."
We made it to Sioux Falls before we headed south to
Omaha.
We used a website called Couchsurfers to find a place to stay the night. A guy told us he would host us in Omaha, Nebraska.
We drove through Iowa (and didn't play any Slipknot 😞 - Iowa is the home of Slipknot). Finally by 11pm we made it to Omaha and met our host. He was a middle aged guy with a family, and he offered us all meals, turkey, spaghetti bolognese, home-made bread etc. He then took us down to his basement...
There was more than we could have expected - we had a pool table, ping pong table, internet connections, private bathroom, TV and Xbox. The whole basement - a living area, bar area, bathroom.
We sat down and talked to the guy for a couple of hours - his name was also Jamie and he also played Piano. We spoke about how he'd traveled across Europe in his band for 5 years and that is why he was willing to help out other travelers.
As I am writing this, Im sitting downstairs in the basement at 1am about to get up at 2.30am to see a full lunar eclipse in Omaha, Nebraska.
We will
wake up at 7am and Jamie has offered to cook us breakfast - pancakes.
Hopefully it will be a good start to another long day. The mileage clock is at 2,200 miles.
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