Cross Country with Cardi: Day 4 - KC to Hill City, SD

Day 4

May 25, 2012

Kansas City to Hill City, South Dakota

We might as well be on an episode of Storm Chasers.

Woke up to the recently familiar sound of roaring thunder. Ali was immediately disappointed that the storm would ruin the morning run routine. Kyle offered a great alternative – P90X Yoga. So we did a bit of that then the rained stopped and so we hit the road running. Got a nice little 3 mile tour of Jack’s neighborhood on our run. Then had some Cinnamon Toast Crunch – the taste you can see! Then loaded up Helga and got on the 29 N.

300 miles later we turned on to the 90 W. Took that for 300 miles until Mount Rushmore.

That’s it. That’s all. Boring.

Just kidding. There’s a bit more to this blog but that just gives you an idea of what is in South Dakota… a whole lot of nothing.

After a hawt date of Qdoba and Fresh Berry Fro-Yo at a Rapid City Strip Mall (Kyle’s SUCH a classy guy) we made our way towards the hotel. The Super 8 Motel in... Keystone. Turns out there about six Super 8’s in a thirty mile radius. We showed up at the wrong one. This wasn’t easy for us at the end of a 12 hr driving day. Especially since the Black Hills were so densely covered in fog Ali had slowed to driving at 7 mph. We couldn’t see more than 20 feet ahead of us. Luckily, Kyle was following on google maps and could predict the turns. The late night tour of the Black Hills was like something out of the Twilight Zone. “Its like driving in a dream” – Ali.

We eventually made it to Hill City and proceeded to pass the eff out. Thank heavens.

Drive highlights:

- A Subway that serves ice cream and personal pizzas! What!?! Didn’t know that existed. We stuck to the traditional sandwiches. Jared approves.

- We found a friend in the car. A little spider cascaded down from the ceiling of Helga. Kyle promptly smacked it into my lap.

- Broke our previous highest speed, this time it was Kyle with a raging 91 mph. Don’t worry mom, the cruise control quickly settled to 77 mph after passing that annoying truck driver.

- 5^th storm of the trip. Luckily not as bad as the one getting into Kansas City. We felt like storm chasers!

Following this guy through SD, the storm chaser professional

- Snacks are always important on any road trip. Trader Joe's has all the bomb food stuffs.

We killed this trailmix full of chocolately goodness over the first four days

- Drove through Omaha to confirm that… nothing was going on there.

Welcome to Omaha! We stayed long enough to read this sign

Welcome to Iowa!

Shoutout to Charlie Preacher and Jillanne McCarty. Go Hawkeyes!

- Ali passed out for a solid 40 min nap towards the end of the Iowa stretch.

On cruise control, Kyle was able to snap a no-look picture

Passed the quintessential Glen half-washed car. The back needed to be scrubbed and squeegeed.

- A lot of the gas stations in South Dakota have casinos in them.

This is what our drive looked like. Sometimes we saw other cars.

- We saw one car from Washington. That’s the farthest license plate we’ve seen by far! Not a California plate in sight.

- We learned the definition of rolling hills.

- We almost died of boredom but a quick chat with Elizabeth Symczak saved the day. Pshhhwhew!

- The bug graveyard on the windshield is almost to capacity at ~348 splattered. Don’t worry Poppa Farr, we’ll clean it in no time...or the next storm will.

- Cruising through SD we were making great time and decided to take a left off the highway to tour the Badlands before sunset. I felt like turning off the interstate to check on the little town like in the Pixar movie Cars. We were rewarded. The pictures are below.