Stuck in South Dakota!
(but in a good way)

Can't write much, since I must be up in 6 hours to drive 600 miles to Chicago (we are in Sioux Falls tonight), but suffice to say that South Dakota is beautiful, and we just couldn't leave. Yesterday we covered only 200 miles or so, but did 4.5 cool things:

(1) got claustrophobic in Jewel Cave (okay, not so cool, but I discovered that I definitely cannot be a spelunker or a dwarf -- I belong above ground);

(2) wondered if the sculptor who started the Crazy Horse monument (which will be, if ever finished, twice as big as Mount Rushmore) 60 years ago was crazy or inspired;












(3) decided (again) that Lincoln was my favorite president when I saw his 60-foot face at Mount Rushmore;









(4) saw the place where Wild Bill Hickok was shot in Deadwood; and finally

(4.5) got scared by a T-Rex in Wall Drug Store, located in Wall, SD.

And today! We planned to be on the way out of SD by noon, but because of the sheer crazy beauty of the Badlands...









... not to mention the prairie dogs (it was all very Meerkat Manor there)...












... and the kitschy loopiness of Wall Drug (where we met a lovely free spirit in the form of a 43-year-old cashier who worked one summer at Wall Drug when she was a teen and came back after deciding she wanted to cast off the shackles of material existence -- more later)...












...we didn't head out of northwest South Dakota until after 4 pm.

But of course, it was all worth it.

Pie report: 2 very disappointing pie days -- the cherry pie at Cactus Cafe in Wall was sour and undercooked, the cherry pie at Wall Drug today was bland and mass-production-like, and the lemon meringue pie at Fryn' Pan in Sioux Falls was soggy and tasted like kitchen cleaner. I expected better of your pies, South Dakota. But I guess you can't have it all.