Today was an exciting day... here are the stats...
Today's Stats:
Miles: 530.4 (cummulative 1307.6)
Estimated Avg gas mileage: 23.5mpg (it was windy and hilly today)
Number of cows seen: No idea, but I'm confident it was more than the number of cars we saw all day...
Total License Plate Count: 40 states and 2 territories... we are missing... Alaska, Hawaii, N Carolina, W Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire. I know we'll get Alaska... but we'll have to keep our eyes out for the rest...
We started out headed on I-90 West and drove through Buffalo Gap National Grassland. It was exciting let me tell you...
Then we found the one remaining South Dakota missile silo from the Cold War. It used to house a nuclear missile that could be launched within 5 minutes and would be over 6000 miles away in 30 minutes. After the Cold War they dismantled the missiles and imploded all the silos (in SD at least) but kept this one for history's sake.
After checking out the missile silo we stopped in Wall, SD for the Wall Drugstore. It's basically just a big tourist trap, but since there was 5cent coffee we went ahead and stopped. Plus you get a free bumpersticker! Here's Libby and I outside the Wall Drug, we had to wait a few minutes for it to open...
Then we were back on the road headed towards Mount Rushmore. In that process we drove just north of the Badlands so we could get an idea of the bluffs and the desert feel, and also drove through the Black Hills which were also beautiful.
Seeing Mount Rushmore was amazing and the gradeur and the scale can not be appreciated until you see it in person.
The National Park Service did a great job with a museum etc at Rushmore. My favorite thing I learned was that Borglum (the artist) made a complete scale model of it in his studio, then measured coordinates with a dumb weight system (a rod was attached to a horizontal protractor on the top of the head and then a weight hung until it touched a certain spot, so for every spot they knew the angle on the protractor, the distance from the center of the head and the distance down from the top)... every inch on the model was a foot on the mountain. Pretty cool use of basic tools in my opinion.
Dad and I hanging out at Mount Rushmore. It was crazy windy and you had to hold on to not get blown away!
After that, we made it to Wyoming!
Where we drove past lots and lots of oil derricks and cattle.
I know... my "landscape" pictures are all starting to look the same... but that one has an oil derrick and cows in it!
Next up... Montana! This is the last US state besides Alaska.
Our last stop of the day before the hotel in Billings was at the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as "Custer's Last Stand." They had a really nice memorial to members of the 7th Calvary and the united front the Indian Tribes put up against the soldiers.
Tomorrow, Dad and I head to Calgary where we pick up Mom and Alison, then its off to Banff :)
I'm impressed that you saw all the state welcome signs. When we crossed from TX to NM we didn't even realize it until we hit a city that the map said was in NM. I don't guess they put signs on the smaller hwys. Oil derricks and cattle was a pretty similar theme for what we saw of TX and well... most of the southwest.
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