Spearfish Canyon and Devil's Tower

   Spearfish Canyon is a beautiful scenic drive. A nice little loop route out of Sturgis that circles around and puts you back on Interstate 90 after about 40 miles. Well worth the time to take it. Goes thru the legendary Deadwood. Here's a couple of shots of the canyon. The streams were full from the melting snows.

Corn Palace

   I forgot to mention the Corn Palace. It's in Mitchell, South Dakota. Actually before you get to the Badlands. I can't help but think that part of the Corn Palace's draw is the fact that you've been traveling across Eastern South Dakota for miles and miles. And it wouldn't take a lot of reason to want to stop and look at something. But actually, it is rather unique. It's worth a stop. Those are ears of corn that the pheasant hunting scene is made out of. Pretty cool. We're from Illinois. We can appreciate corn.

Pictures

Badlands National Park







Stunning formations.

Tracy's favorite reptiles.

Created by wind and water.

Female Bighorn Sheep

A closer shot.

And even closer.

Wall, South Dakota

  I have no pictures of Wall either. Only because I felt there wasn't anything in Wall worth taking a picture of. Wall Drugs is there. Don't bother. Huge tourist trap. Designed to try and separate you from your money. One good point about Wall. We ate dinner at a small restaurant and I had the Walleye. It was very good.

Mason City, Iowa.

  I have no pictures for Mason City, Iowa. A footnote. Mason City was the boyhood home of Robert Meredith Willson who wrote the musical The Music Man. You know the movie. "76 trombones lead the big parade." And many of the characters in the movie were based on people from Mason City that Willson knew growing up there. ok. Their 15 minutes is over.

Finally, the pictures.

   We were unable to post pictures during the trip because the I-Pad wasn't compatible with the blog. We could post text, but try as we might, we were unable to upload pictures to the site. So I'm now going to post pictures that correspond to each days post. If I have them. Here goes.

Albert Lea, MN

Hot air balloon ride at 5:30am. We could see several states while in the air. Due to wind direction we were not able to fly over Mt. Rushmore. After the balloon ride we went to Mt. Rushmore. We then bid the Black Hills and Badlands adieu and headed to Minnesota for the evening. We will be back in Illinois on Sunday. The entire vacation has been amazing and the sights unforgettable.