Day 4 (Aug 10): Rapid City & Black Hills

Art alley in Rapid City

Chris looked out of the hotel window in the morning, and was very excited asking me to check out the graffiti in the alley behind the hotel.  

Rapid City is an interesting historical looking town with sculptures of famous figures at almost every cross street.

Black Hills

Black Hills is just about an hour away from the Badlands but the landscape is completely different. The native americans called this Black Hills after its rolling layers of mountains (looking black, more like dark green/blue) and the Badlands was called White Hills.  The French gave the Badlands its name for the literal meaning of the name.

The region encompasses Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave, Hot Springs Mammoth Site, and the Needles Highway.  These mentioned are just a small fraction of the Black Hills.

Mount Rushmore

Wind Cave is 320 million years old, now ranked the world's fourth longest cavern.  The largest is Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

This cave has unique formations such as boxwork, frostwork and flowstone, not found in other caves.  

This boxwork is formed by residues brought in from a flood over 320 million years ago that remained between rocks or stones at that time.  Over hundreds of millions of years, the softer rocks eroded, leaving behind this box looking thing called boxwork.  Boxwork is so unique because a flood has to happen prior to the cave being formed.  

 95% of boxwork in the world is in Wind Cave.

The crystal looking formation above is called frostwork.  They were formed over hundreds of millions of years due to humidity.  Jewel Cave (on the other side of Black Hills) has more of these, hence the name.

Flowstone, the name is given after its look that resembles flowing water

The graffiti above is left behind by a group of explorers in 1892. Yes, 120 years ago.  It looks like it was written on yesterday.  

Wild Life Loop

This is the first time we are just feet away from wild life.  We saw herds of bison numbering approximately 500, mule deer, pronghorn deer, burros, and prairie dogs.  Hundreds of prairie dogs and they are loud!

Bison

Pronghorn deer

Prairie dogs

Wild Turkey

On our way back, we encountered a traffic jam in the park.  Hundreds of bison were taking their evening stroll and a herd of them started walking toward the cars.  I was scared as the bison (the one on the bottom left corner of this picture) was walking next to us and it is bigger than our car!  You can see it's almost the size of the SUV covered in the picture.  We had to wait and slowly squeeze our way in and that delayed us for a good 45 minutes, but well worth the wait.  I've seen more bison than I ever need to in my life.

We took a break on wild life loop to have lunch at State Game Lodge.  It was built in 1922 as a summer white house for President Coolidge and was also frequented by President Eisenhower.  It's now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

French Creek at the base of Mount Coolidge

Along Needles Highway

One cluster of many Needles around

Driving in between Needles

Notice the trees?  

Final stop: Hotel in Sundance

Day 3 (Aug 9): The Badlands!

Day 3 starts from Worthington, MN.  The interstate (highway) exit where the hotel is was closed.  We had to do a detour last night.  I forgot to mention, last night, bikers were camping at the hotel parking lot.  Apparently, all the hotels in the area are full.  We almost parked next to a biker sleeping on his bike. 

So the exit is closed so we asked for direction for the detour to get back on the road.  Detour was nice, on dirt road to a farmland for parts of it.  But when we get to the connecting point to the highway, that is blocked too!   The road block seems unnecessary since the construction appears to be after the highway entrance.  So we got out of the car, moved the road block to the side and drove away.

We passed by more corn fields, farm lands and occasional sprouts of wind farms.  Now we know what the red blinking lights that look like UFO landing path from the sky are.  They are lights on each of the post holding the turbine and blades.  We are both excited about the Badlands.  We have been talking about visiting for years and now we're finally heading there!

We entered South Dakota at 10.54 am.  Speed limit is 75 mph so Chris is happy speeding up.  The scenery changed from corn fields to industrial marking quite clearly the border of South Dakota and Minnesota.  The road turns red too!  So I was flipping through AAA Triptik (a book AAA prepared for us with maps and information of different places we'll pass by) and read that there is a corn palace in a town called Mitchell, where we can stop for lunch!  This is the biggest corn palace in the world.  I'm sure they win that title because I can't think of another country who would use food as decoration.  Anyway, we thought we'll need lunch so might as well stop by to check it out.

The Corn Palace

The outside of this building is decorated entirely by corn and different types of grains and grass

The Corn Palace was built in 1892.  The building is re-designed and re-decorated every summer.  The idea of the corn palace was hatched when the town was only 12 years old to showcase the crops grown in the area and to attract immigrant farmers to settle there.  Inside the building, they have pictures of the corn palace every year.  You can see how the design changes with the era, and you can tell when the country is rich and doing well and the years when life isn't as cushy.

More burger

We went to The Depot for lunch. It used to be a railway station but is converted to a restaurant now.

Next to The Depot

The Badlands!

I feel like I'm on another planet!  The view is amazing!  We hiked the notch trail.  The book says it's not for the faint of heart and we thought why not.  So we started hiking.

This is the ladder we scaled up to on the hiking trail

The view from the top. Scary hike along the edges of cliffs but worth the hike.

Back at the bottom of our hiking trail.  We were hiking along the top edges of the cliffs you see in this picture above.

Home for birds

After the Notch Trail, we tried Door Trail

Yellow Mound after sunset

The camera could see better than our naked eyes can by the time I took this picture. Sun sets really quick here, it's pitch dark within minutes!  

Sturgis

Chris' friend, David, is in Sturgis for the bike rally.  That explains why hotels around here is so expensive this week.  

David is going around the country this summer in this selling calzones.  I said he should write a book.

We call it a night after that and retire to a historical hotel called Alex Johnson in Rapid City.

Day 2 (Aug 8): To Madison, Wisconsin through Minnesota to South Dakota

We stopped by Madison for lunch and to see Donnie (my college friend from freshmen year).  He's a noble for quitting his job as an actuary to teach math to help public schools in Milwaukee.  He has told us about the farmers' market and apparently this is the biggest real market (produce directly from farmers) in the country!   This is quite a nice town where University of Wisconsin-Madison is at.  The capitol building is next to the campus with two lakes on both sides of the campus.

Farmers' market around the state capitol

Chris and Donnie chilling while I take more pictures.  Chris has two bags of cherries (a bag of sweet and a bag of sour cherries) we bought from the farmers before lunch.  Speaking of lunch, we went to Dotty Dumpling's for lunch.  It's a burger house, not a dumplings joint.  I had a burger with sauerkraut (which both of them think is disgusting) but I think it's absolutely delicious.  Chris and Donnie had buffalo burger (first of the many on the road).  It's advertised as the best in Madison and I have to agree that this is probably one of the best I've had.

Sour cherries.  They're more flavorful than sweet cherries.

After a great afternoon with Donnie in Madison, we head on the road toward Worthington, where the hotel we're going to stay is at.  

We had our picnic dinner along the Mississippi River with more remaining ham and kalbanosy, cucumber and tomatoes.  We can't pick a better picnic spot. We saw a bald eagle, a couple ospreys and beautiful skies. The river does make me feel a little small petite in the midst of this great nature.  This is the narrow part of the river after the dam.  The other side of the dam is one of the meeting points of a few rivers and it's beautiful.  We were driving so I don't have a picture of that.  There was a sign that says scenic turnout but we couldn't see the scenery at that point where the sign was and we thought we saw enough when we were picnic-ing.  The view is even more amazing on the other side.  So now we know when we see sign that says scenic lookout, we should stop.

Day 1 (Aug 7): Lexington-Chicago

After packing the car up to the brim, we set off on the road.  Mum has packed us lunch that will last us 3 days!  I'm glad the cooler did its job and we had good kalbanosy still by the time we get to the Badlands.

Traffic getting in to the city in Chicago is still bad like Chris used to recall during his college days.  He has been telling me so much about this fruit juice bubble tea place for years so we thought instead of waiting in traffic, might as well detour to Chinatown to Joy Yee Noodle Shop.  Yes, it is a noodle shop but it's popular for its fruit juice and bubble tea.  

We had 1) avocado + cantaloupe + bubbles and 2) mango + papaya + bubbles.  Chris came up with that.  Avacado + cantaloupe is his favorite after trying different concoction every time he came here during his college days.  And it is delicious!  I know...avocado and cantaloupe?  mixed?  yes.  The girl making the juice asked me twice if I meant I want to have half avocado and half cantaloupe in my bubble juice shake.  She asked us how it tastes like after we tried it because she has never had it nor heard of anyone making it that way.  Chris said if you stick to just one juice, it's very good!  (Switching between avocado+cantaloupe and then the mango+papaya changes the taste buds.)  Then I said, just like sticking to one wife. :)

We get back on to the traffic to Lizzie's apartment.  She kindly host us for our first night of road trip!  Her apartment is right above a bar in Old Town, very nice spacious apartment with some character.  Dinner at A La Turka Turkish Kitchen.  Chris remembers going to a good Turkish restaurant in that area but has not idea what it's called.  So Lizzie called a couple friends and they guessed it must be this restaurant.  What we didn't know is that the have belly dancers every Friday night!  We did not realize that until when Lizzie's friend noticed the $21 entertainment charge! :)  Dinner was great with wonderful company.  I saw Selena, after years since we were both in BU, and Joyi and her fiance.  I haven't seen Joyi for easily over a decade.  We used to hang out in the weekends when we were kids, like young kids.  

We were all too tired to go to Green Mill so Lizzie took us to a live music bar.  The music is ok but the woman vocalist is rather bad, so we had a drink and head to another bar, and Lizzie said we have to see this other bar before we go.  

Old Town Ale House

It looks like a normal bar when you first walked in but not until when you noticed the paintings on the wall.  Along the bar are nude paintings of celebrities caught in recent news (Spitzer, Gov. Sanford, Palin etc.) and the other side of the wall hangs paintings of frequent customers.  Among the paintings is a normal picture of Obama with the owner.  

Day 0: Louisville & Last day in Lexington

Chris and I arrived in Oakland a few weeks ago after our 17-day road trip across country.  The country, the nature, and the Americana experience is amazing!  

I initially thought of not having personal pictures up on this site but this road trip documentary would be an exception because I want to share the trip, the good time and the beautiful scenery with family and friends.  It's just easier to do it all in one place, here.  We'll share the beauty of the country in the next 17 posts.  Pictures (no matter how good they are) do not do justice for the grandeur of the nature, the beauty of the mountains, the vastness of the prairies and the ocean, the wisdom of the trees, the darkness of caves (and their hundreds of millions of years in age), and the experience of sharing space with wildlife...but I tried, and hope you like the pictures coming up in the next 17 posts.

Chris' mum took this picture to commemorate the celebration lunch of me getting my Greencard.  But to us, this is a nice lunch to thank mum for the wonderful summer.  

This is the "before" picture, still looking fair and pale...before the summer tan. 

Day 0: Louisville

The day before we left on our 17-day trip, mum (Chris' mum) drove us to Louisville.  We initially wanted to have lunch at an African cuisine place Chris used to go when he used go to Louisville for gigs (over 10 years ago) but the restaurant is no longer there!  The website is still up and running but the storefront says "to rent" so this must be pretty recent.  This is a good excuse to take mum out for a good lunch before we leave town so we turned around and head for Proof, the restaurant in 21c museum hotel.  We were quite impressed with the food the last time we were here (see posting titled Louisville) that we wanted to take mum here.  I ordered steak and eggs again, but the ingredients are slightly different this time.  I guess the dish varies depending on the season and the chef's choice.  

The exhibit has changed as well but a couple permanent art pieces are still there.  What I just realized this time is that the alphabets on the projector does not just move as our projection touches them.  The letters can also be raised! :)  The quality of the video is pretty bad because I was having too much fun playing with the letters (instead of taking a video).  But the 2-second clip shows how this projector works.

The artists were still setting up this exhibit when we were there and TV crew just left after interviewing the artists.  I didn't ring my circular polarizer filter with me but despite the reflection, you can see the art.  Bottom left looks like a basement where bears live, having popcorn watching TV and talking on cell phone. Looks like a depiction of the good American life.  Top left has birds on trees during winter.  The box on the right appears to be a foreign land where all our junk gets shipped to.  From the character pieces, it's pretty clear that's China.  People sitting on going through piles of scrap metal, batteries and computer chips and mother boards, separating recyclable parts.  There is a polar bear and a goat hanging out (leaving the role of them to your imagination). To the right of the trash pile is a building with a chinese family on the ground floor, old lady tending to a sick man on the upper floor and what appears to be like a classroom in the other building.  The difference is that they were wearing face masks.  On the other side of this box is a building with female workers on a mass production line on higher floors, and women hanging out in their living quarters filled with bunk beds and stools. You get the story this exhibit is trying to tell.