The Road: Day 2

Everything moves slowly in South Dakota, including us. We left the hotel around 9 a.m. and headed straight to Starbucks, where we took the news that they didn't sell breakfast sandwiches much harder than we should have. After waiting there, then waiting somewhere else for breakfast sandwiches, then waiting while someone paid for gas with an out of state check (c'mon, people!) it was 10 a.m. before we were on the highway.

Something I remembered, and Steve was soon to discover, is that South Dakota has more billboards than anywhere else in the world. They started about 30 mins. outside of Sioux Falls--signs urging us to wear fur, stop at Wall Drug, visit the only Corn Palace in the world.

(we had to go--the sign told us to!)

eat here, drink coffee there, and my personal favorite friendly reminder of the day

We crossed the Missouri River like Lewis & Clark and stopped for lunch at Al's Oasis, which was a restaurant, grocery store, and gift shop all rolled into one. And they conveniently had an end cap full of bullets near the salad dressing aisle. They had it all!

As we pulled out of Al's the car was making a noise that can only be described as "not good." We pulled over on the shoulder and Steve discovered that some sort of covering was lose and dragging on the ground, so, in his best Evan Kovacs imitation, he laid down in the snow and crawled underneath the car to duct tape it up. About this time one of South Dakota's finest pulled up to help, and he escorted us to a turn-around so we could head back the way we came as quickly as possible. In a turn of events reminiscent of another couple that also had some misfortune traveling in December, the first two service stations didn't want anything to do with us, but the third, the awesome folks at Willrodt Auto put the car up right away and determined that our heating cover had rusted out. They said we didn't need it, ripped it off for us, told us Merry Christmas, and sent us on our way. We love you Willrodt Auto and South Dakota State Police!!

By this point we'd lost an hour and we worried that, as Bruce Springsteen would say, our "trouble in the heartland" meant we would not make it to the Badlands before the sun set. We crossed into Mountain Time and arrived at the 27-mile loop road a little after 3 p.m. We had the whole park to ourselves--it was just us, deer

a herd of antelope, and one small rabbit.

We managed to get through the park before it got too dark, and our next stop was (of course!) Wall Drug. We got our free ice water, 5 cent coffee (not recommended), 2 donuts and we were off again.

When my iPhone gets service, which isn't often out here, we're using it to Yelp our next meal. We realized that we weren't going to make it Sheridan, WY in time for dinner, which left us two options: Rapid City or Spearfish. Based on the Yelp reviews we pushed on to Spearfish and settled on Shoot the Bull Steakhouse. It was OLD SCHOOL--Regal Beagle-type booths, fireplace in the middle, and 100% local. I ordered the small serving of prime rib, which came with a salad and the best mashed sweet potatoes I've ever had. Steve had the prime rib French dip. They also brought us a loaf of freshly baked bread with homemade garlic butter. And we got all of this for less than what it cost us to eat at the Olive Garden last night!

The highway stretched on and on, but we finally made it here to Sheridan around 10 p.m. Today's total travel, with side trips and car trouble, was 13 hours.