Rapid City, South Dakota

The day before we left home, Danny pulled a muscle in his back which has been bothering him every day.  This morning we found a hardware store and he got a back brace which he says has helped.  He used that opportunity to ask about all the corn we had been seeing. He had been wanting to know what the corn was used for.  The salesman said the vast majority of it becomes ethanol and is mixed with the gas that runs our cars.  Now we know why miles and miles of corn is needed.  Along the way we have seen a number of crop-duster planes.  The first one was Monday afternoon and nearly gave me heart failure.  We were going down the interstate at about 75 mph.  A small plane had been circling in front of us.  Suddenly, it dove down toward the highway.  I thought it was going to land on the highway.  It was barely above car level when it went over the corn field and started spraying right beside us.  I can remember as a child seeing crop-dusters spraying tobacco fields but this was the first one I had seen in many years.

Today has been a beautiful drive. Yesterday we saw the different shades of green; today we saw some more of that but also the golden waves of grain.  At a rest area, Danny commented to the man working there that we had seen an awful lot of corn and soy beans and it was all beginning to look alike. The man said after we crossed the river, we would see more wheat and cattle than soy and corn.  We weren't sure which river he was talking about but fairly soon found out it was the Missouri.  We rounded a curve and all we could see in front of us was water. Because we couldn't see the bridge, it looked like we were going to drive straight into the water.  We made it safely over the bridge and stopped to eat lunch at a neat place in Oacoma, SD.  We couldn't decide what to get because we had walked by the dessert case on the way to the table.  There was a fabulous looking coconut cream pie in that case.  The menu said the chicken plate had two pieces of chicken so we decided to share a plate then share dessert.  It's a good thing we shared because each of us had full plates with half an order.  We would have wasted a lot of food had we each gotten an order. That coconut pie sure was good.

After we arrived in Rapid City and checked in to the hotel, we went to Mt. Rushmore.  That was almost a spiritual experience to think that God gave a man the vision and knowledge to design that piece of art long before computers were available.  We were very pleased that every thing in the gift shop was made in the USA.  A sign proudly made that declaration. Much of it was made by local artisans.  When we visited Gettysburg several years ago, it was very disappointing that everything in that gift shop, owned by the United States, was made in China or some other foreign country.  We did make a mistake with the hotel.  Not knowing the area, it looked as if Mt. Rushmore was right outside Rapid City.  It turns out it is 20 miles away and there were other hotels much closer than the one we chose. 

This picture and the one below are of the Missouri River from different sides of the river.

Fields of green and amber waves of grain.

This is a picture of what the mountain looked like before blasting and chiseling began.

Seeing this ticked another item off the bucket list.  It is awe inspiring.

Vermillion, South Dakota

Today we drove across some beautiful farmland. The shades of green were amazing. There was dark green soy beans, a lighter green shade for the corn stalks, and yellow green corn tassels.  Sometimes the fields went on as far as you could see.  This was across most of Iowa.  We also saw many more wind farms.  We saw several wind turbine blades being hauled by tractor flatbeds.  One of the rest areas that was almost surrounded by wind turbines had a blade standing up and information about the them.  There must be a fairly consistent wind of no less than 12 mph for the power company to consider wind power.  For size comparison, Danny is standing at the foot of the wind turbine blade.  He is 6' tall.

The wireless router at this hotel keeps crashing so I am posting via my phone.  This will be short.

This is for Jen.  Everytime I have posted anything on FB, she has sent me a message not to post and drive.  This sign was in one of the rest areas.  BTW, I will not be typing on my phone while driving.

Peoria, IL

Today we had a wonderful visit with Aunt Mary in Louisville, KY.  Mom's baby brother, Clarence, went to Louisville in the early 50's to go to mortuary school.  While in Louisville, he met Mary Smallwood.  He never moved back to Stoneville and he never became a mortician.  I can remember being around 3 or 4 years old when he brought Mary home to meet the family.  I thought she was so beautiful.  She will be 88 in November and is still beautiful.  We got to spend around 4 hours with her and it was a good day for her to have a distraction.  Today would have been Uncle Clarence's birthday and she was a little sad about that.  I had my tablet with lots of pictures of Cindy, Libby, and my families.  She enjoyed looking at them.  We went to one of her favorite restaurants, The Fishery, to eat.  I hated leaving her.  I told her we would go home through Louisville and get her and take her with us if she would go home with us.  She declined saying her traveling days were over.  When we left, she was in the yard blowing kisses.

After Louisville, we went through Indiana and Illinois.  We saw some beautiful farms.  I was fascinated by all the windmills we saw.  We drove by miles and miles of them.  Those things are BIG.  Tonight we are in Peoria, Illinois. 

My beautiful Aunt Mary

Frankfort, Kentucky

We are in Frankfort, Kentucky about an hour from Aunt Mary's house in Louisville.  I don't remember the road numbers but after we got on I77, we went toward Bristol, then Knoxville, Lexington, Ky, and finally to Frankfort.  Once we were over the mountain and on 77, it was all interstate.  So, the trip here was essentially uneventful.  There was one thunderstorm about two hours from Frankfort.  It poured rain and most traffic slowed way down.  Some not so smart people flew past us and one spun out and got stuck in the median.  About 30 minutes before we got to the hotel, we had an experience I have never had before.  There were splats on the windshield that sounded like huge rain drops but left big white smears.  It was not just one or two splats, it was hundreds, to the point it was getting hard to see through the windshield.  When the windshield washer was turned on, it smeared pretty badly.  You couldn't see any bugs and I briefly wondered if there was a flock of birds flying over us - seriously, that was what it looked like.  When we got to the hotel, there were black bugs all over the front of the car so we knew that was what it was.  Now the question is, how are we going to clean the windshield in the morning?

Route changes

We were watching the news last night and saw a picture of black smoke rolling out of a tunnel on I77 near Bluefield, WV.  That's a tunnel we would be going through on our planned route.  Reports say the tunnel will be closed for several days so that necessitated taking another look at the route AAA had planned to Louisville.  I think everything is packed and ready to go.  We're both tired so I hope we will sleep well tonight and leave at a decent time.

Getting Ready

We have been talking about a trip to Alaska for years.  Both of us retired at the start of the summer and decided this would be the ideal retirement gift to each other.  Danny declared he would NOT fly - ever again.  This is particularly ironic coming from an Air Force vet who used to love to fly everywhere.  Since Dad had worked on the construction of the Alaska Highway, I wanted to drive on it so, we will be driving to Alaska.  It took forever for passports to arrive so we can go through Canada.  We had hoped to leave on Monday, July 21, but we didn't have passports.  We continued on a day-to-day basis doing whatever we wanted.  Danny made the comment that nothing was ready but the car.  The car had new tires, oil changed, a new air filter, new windshield wipers, battery checked, and had been washed and vacuumed.  I had been getting snack type foods and bottled water and drinks.  Finally on Wednesday, July 23, our birth certificates came with a card saying passports had been issued and would arrive in a separate mailing.  On Thursday, July 24, Danny came in with the mail saying, "They're here; did you hear me, they're here."  Getting ready went into high gear.  All clothes were laundered.  Jenni had suggested getting plastic boxes to put bathroom stuff and medications in.  That required a trip to Wal-Mart and they had exactly the kind of boxes I visualized with locking lids with a handle.  I pulled out the clothes I intended to take and piled them on a bed.  How do you pack for a four-week vacation, especially when clothes for such different temperatures are needed?  Right now, at 10:00pm in Eden it is 74 degrees and in Fairbanks it is 57.  I decided to pack two suitcases, a medium sized one for the first week containing short-sleeved and sleeveless shirts and mostly shorts.  A pair of capris and a pair of jeans was included.  The second, much larger, case has capris and jeans with long-sleeved and a few short-sleeved shirts.  After the smaller case is empty, I will repack it from the larger case.  Danny is also packing two cases.  We will be making visits to laundromats; I haven't done that since the power was out for a week.  We have one more day to get everything ready before we leave Sunday morning.



This picture of Dad is from a book on the Alaska Highway.