My Ole South Dakota Home

We left Minneapolis this morning, and made a pit stop at the World’s Largest (by one man) Ball of Twine in Darwin, Minnesota.  I am sure that you have all viewed the video that Rich posted featuring Weird Al’s musical interpretation of the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.  There will be a separate post about The Ball of Twine shortly.  As for the rest of our day, we ended up taking a slightly more scenic route than we would have without the aforementioned side quest. 

Since Darwin was about an hour west of Minneapolis, we would have had to backtrack all the way into the city to reconnect with the interstate (I-90 for those keeping score at home).  Instead, our favorite traveling companion, Susan, directed us due west on US-12, which runs from Washington State (at the Pacific edge, just north of Oregon) to Detroit.  It was a lovely 2-lane road, passing through a few small towns in between larger tracts of farmland.  After that, it was south on US-71 (which goes from the Canadian border to Shreveport, Louisiana) until finally reconnecting with the interstate.

Along our travels on the US highways, we saw some significant storm damage.  I don’t know if it was the same storm system that hit Minneapolis on Friday, but there certainly were some high winds (tornadoes, maybe?) because there were metal roofs that had been peeled off and scattered in the fields.  More than one silo suffered major damage, and I would have lost count of the number of trees that lost major limbs, if I had been counting.  I did, however, count exactly 1 tree that had been uprooted.  We stopped at a Wal-Mart to replenish supplies on our way out, and one of the ladies who worked there said that the entire county lost power during the storm.  As a result, many people had come into the store looking to buy lanterns.  However, the storms were so close to the Wal-Mart (and so dangerous, apparently) that customers & employees alike were evacuated to the back room of the store, which is presumably safer.  Yikes. 

Luckily, the rest of the voyage was safe and violent-weather-free, and we arrived safely in Rapid City, South Dakota, which is about 50 miles from the Wyoming border.  Tomorrow, it’s off to do some spelunking, a bit of hiking, and to see some giant dudes carved into a mountain at Mount Rushmore.

--Karyn