Our Journey Has Begun!

Well. It begins. It's official. Yup... we're crazy. We had a very busy week last week. You can now call Eric, Dr. Lieutenant Metterhausen as he graduated with his doctorate and got double promoted shortly after. Which means you can call me, Mrs. Dr. Lt. Metterhausen. :) That's a mouthful. Our last week in town was super crazy. Eric didn't receive his official orders until Tuesday. Thankfully we were able to set up the movers to come assess our stuff Wednesday, pack up everything Thursday, and load it all in the truck Friday. We left Sunday with our car and stuff, which packed it to the brim. I wanted to fill up any empty space in the car with Aldi canned goods.. but Eric was concerned that we had already reached the weight limit of my car. So for the sake of needing said car for a 2500 mile road trip.. I abandoned the Aldi stop idea. :( And we checked.. there doesn't seem to be any Aldi's this far west. We were hoping if there was one in Washington or Idaho we could load up there. Darn.

We left Sunday around noon, and headed up to Dad's to have lunch with the family before our long road trip. We left there around 5pm and the plan was to just drive as long as we could. We made it to Rochester, MN, got a good nights sleep and then headed out the next morning for our next long drive. We would be driving through almost all of South Dakota on Monday and was told by a certain SVA that there were only 5 things to do in South Dakota. Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Corn Palace, and 2 others I don't remember. So when we came upon the corn palace in Mitchell, SD we thought, "Oh! We should stop!" Mr. SVA was WRONG. I said to Eric, If this is one of the 5 things you must stop to see in SD, I don't want to go to the other 4. I've posted a picture of it. We thought the whole thing would be made of corn. Wrong. They make murals on the building of corn. We also thought this would be smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Wrong. It shares a wall with the town's city hall. And is smack dab in the middle of a city. When you walk inside, it's a stadium - a fairly new one. I will admit, it was an odd spectacle to see... but is it worth the 30-40 minutes we lost driving? I'm not so sure...

Last night we stayed in Interior, South Dakota. We are right outside Badlands National Park, staying in a gem we stumbled upon. It is this quaint Bed & Breakfast that sits atop a butte. That's right... we slept on a butte last night. This B&B is almost in the middle of nowhere... no neighbors to be seen, and the views are stunning. And for $65 a night we got the best hospitality one could find, an amazing home cooked breakfast with burritos, peach cobbler, home made muffins, etc. and a huuuggeee house to roam around in and relax. I will take some pictures of the house and the area when we leave today, and post them in the next entry. Last night we played pinocchle with the owners, who were ecstatic to have run into other people who played. It's always fun playing pinocchle with a new group of people because everyone plays it differently. For those who know the game, the interesting ways they play are instead of passing 3 cards - they pass 4. And they have something called a "shoot". If you think you can win every trick, you call it before you play. If you succeed, you get 100 points. If you lose - 100 points. The funny thing about this rule is that they only play until 150. It didn't happen when we played last night, but seems like too much of a bonus for me. Another guest staying here is doing a cross country bicycle trip. He started in Portland and will end in Boston, going as far south as Atlanta. It was fun to talk to him and hear of his tales. I guess he started pretty early in the season and has run into some snow storms and hail storms. Not to mention cold. It's supposed be a high of about 48 degrees today. I have not packed properly for this weather... and will use up the last of my warm clothes in the next 2 or 3 days.. so hopefully it warms up some.

Today we will hike and explore Badlands National Park, which the little bit we've seen seems very similar to Petrified Forest. We saw some deer driving through last night and some White Pelicans - who knew those existed? After that we'll go to Mt. Rushmore and depending on what time it is we'll start our drive to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, where we'll spend the next 4 days or so. Alright, that's all for now, I should have some more time while in Yellowstone to keep everyone updated and hope to post more pictures then!