Sunday, September 02, 2007

Day 1: St. Louis to Sioux Falls, South Dakota

We left around 10 am this morning on our road trip, stopping briefly in CoMo to drop stuff off with family, then off across the rest of Missouri, up north through St. Joseph and into Iowa.

Believe it or not, there is a state worse than Illinois to travel through - Iowa. I should have known when we entered the state and were greeted by orange construction cones...

The state is boring as heck and when we tried to take a break at the Louis and Clark monument but somehow passed it without knowing it. We were watching for signs - but apparently Iowa isn't as sign obsessed as Missouri and didn't bother to mark it even though it was on their road map. Their rest areas claimed to offer wireless internet, but I couldn't get past their tourist page when I tried to log on.

We did stop and visit Trinity Heights in Sioux City, IA. I'm glad we saw something in this dumb state! Trinity Heights was actually really cool. It's a park (for lack of a better word) featuring a 30 foot statue of Mary and one of Jesus. The statues are very well done and impressive as you can imagine. Inside the visitor center is a life-size wood carving of the last supper. (Photo: Me standing beside the 30 foot statue of Mary)

Finally we made it to South Dakota and are spending the night at a Best Western in Sioux Falls. We have lots of cool things on the agenda for tomorrow...stay tuned!

You can see more pictures from today by clicking here.

2 comments:

gimlet said...

You forgot to mention our stop at IHOP in Sioux City where we were the only non-tatooed patrons! Everyone had tatooes, the waitresses, dads, grandmas, heck, I think even a little kid had Tow Mater "inked" on his arm.

The best parts of Iowa were all the signs pointing out where famous people had been on their ways to get the heck outta Iowa.

So far, South Dakota has been a winner, even though it was already dark and we weren't able to really see anything. The speed limit on the interstate is 75mph (120km/h for those of Canadian persuasion), and Ruby Tuesdays will deliver margaritas to your hotel room. Ole!

Merc Man said...

Maybe all those tatooed folks were on their way to Sturgis for the big Harley festival.

Chili says to check and see if any of these Northern states have fresh alfalfa.

Daisy wants to know if the state has any interesting sniffs.

I've heard that Iowa has the first presidential primary just so everybody can get it over with right off the bat!