More Eastward Progress

Just like last time I drove across the country from Seattle to Massachusetts in 1991, the side trip to Mt. Rushmore took a lot longer than I expected (3 hours from I-90 to Mt. Rushmore and back to I-90) so we ended up skipping the Badlands in favor of making more eastward progress. The road up to Mt. Rushmore from Rapid City has several very steep sections. We were doing 35 some of the time. Much faster on the way back down, obviously.

I wonder how many people skip the Badlands for the same reason. We also had the issue that Charlotte had fallen asleep and when she woke up hot and sweaty we knew she'd be miserable for a while. We didn't need the reduced ventilation of National Park road speeds during that time.

We decided last night there was no way we were going to make it to Chicago by Friday night. It was just too many miles to cover. And the weather is unseasonably hot - 95 degrees today. The van doesn't have AC and it doesn't ventilate very well when the air outside is so hot. The girls were miserable at times today. Carol would wipe them down with cold wet cloths and that helped.

When I was a kid no one in Seattle bought cars with air conditioning. I had forgotten what it was like to take a long road trip at freeway speeds with the windows open and all that wind noise. Nostalgic! It will give the girls torture stories to tell when they are older.

By the way, Audrey made up a joke last night at dinner:

Why did the gum cross the road?

Because it was stuck to the chicken!

Anyway, we chose Chamberlain, SD to stop for the day. It had the right combination of remaining miles to Chicago (about 700) and ending time for the day (6:00 PM, although we also passed into Central Time to 7:00 PM). We called ahead and made sure this hotel had a pool and internet access. The pool was heaven after a really hot day. That's our hotel on the right in the photo (someone else's).

Tomorrow we'll try to cover 500 miles to the vicinity of Wisconsin Dells, WI, leaving about 200 miles to cover on Saturday morning to get to my Uncle Gary and Aunt Kathy's by noon. It's supposed to be hot again tomorrow so that 500 miles could be tough. We're already mostly packed up and hoping for a very early start. So I'd better get to bed.