A voyage across the Midwest

Well, we finally made it to Colorado Springs. We got in Sunday evening, and we're looking for housing.

Our trip out here was great! We started our trip in Okoboji - a few days of boating and hanging out, then to Cherokee to get things sorted out, then we were off - out of Iowa on Monday afternoon. Our first stop was Mitchell, SD - home of the Corn Palace. This place is exactly what it sounds like - it is a building covered in corn. They take different colors of corn grown in SD, cut the ears in half lengthwise then staple it to the wall in a pattern. It's really cool.


Then we went to the exciting state capitol! Pierre is probably the size of Ames..but the building was very pretty. We stopped by the Oahe dam and the hydroelectric generating building place, but unfortunately we missed the tour because they left early. Here is a picture of the Oahe reservoir.

And, the first cactus that we found (Bob came really close to sitting on it).

After Pierre, we rolled into the Badlands. We stayed for two days. It was sooo beautiful, and it was the middle of the week so it wasn't crowded at all. We saw bighorn sheep, prairie dogs (they were sooooooo cute - I took a million pictures of them), some cute weird-looking chipmunks, a bison, a rabbit, a coyote, and a bunch of birds - including a mountain bluebird. The whole area is amazing with short-grass prairies and huge rock formations that are red, green, yellow and grey. We took about 250 pictures in the park - here are some of my favorites.

After the Badlands we headed for the Rapid City and the Black Hills. We saw Mt. Rushmore (from the road, it was $8 to park..and I'm not that patriotic), tons of big boulders (all the rocks were shiny and sparkley), a bison, some bighorn sheep in town, and some scary, scary mountain roads (I'm so glad I wasn't driving!). We also stopped at Jewel Cave, the second longest cave system in the world. It had lots of crystals in it and some cool formations, but a lot of the formations looked like someone had spilled a lot of wax and it cooled there. It was pretty neat, and it was 49 degrees, so I was glad I'd brought a jacket.

Then, on to Wyoming. Wyoming has approximately ten towns in the whole state, and none of them are big. We saw a highway marker for a town named Lost Spring; the elevation was 4996 and the population was 1 (no joke). On highway 85 (I think), we went for 81 miles without seeing a town, no bathrooms, nothing but cows and grass. However, we saw a new animal - pronghorn antelope! They would stand in pastures with the cows, and they all had babies with them, they were so cute! We stopped in Cheyenne for a little while then headed down to Colorado Springs.

Now the real adventures begin - on my to do list : 1) find housing 2) find a job. I'll let you all know how it goes!