Vacation Post #7

August 18th

We departed Yellowstone and drove south through Grand Teton National Park- fabulous scenery. In fact, there had been great scenery the past few days.

We came to the town of Dubois (pronounced dew-boys) where I rode my second jackalope of the trip. See, I told you there would be more. This one was furry and actually looked like a "real" animal.

By early evening we came across a sign along the highway for Ayers Natural Bridge. This sounded interesting to us, so we made a detour to check it out. It was rather pretty, but I wouldn't exactly call it a bridge. The pictures of us below are on top of the arch, and as you can see, you wouldn't really use these rocks to travel over the water.

As we were sitting on top of the bridge we noticed the skies darkening. There was some camping at the bridge, but it looked pretty full so we got back in the truck and kept driving. We saw some other campgrounds, but they looked pretty exposed and the skies looked pretty bad.

So instead we spent the night at a motel in Douglas, Wyoming- Home of (what else) the Jackalope! We checked in, watched some tv, checked email, etc and then peeked out the windows. The sun was shining and no storm in sight. Oh well. At least I was able to get some pictures uploaded, so it was somewhat worth it.

Vacation Post #4

As always, scroll down for earlier vacation posts

Our first stop of the day was Hawkeye Point, the highest point of Iowa. It is on a farm- pretty much in the owner's back yard. However, the owner is elderly and this year she recently moved elsewhere in town. The land was still being farmed adn the property looked like it was being maintained, so obviously someone is coming by the place. It will be interesting to see what happens in terms of high point access if she sells. (Some owners restrict access to select weekends which is a big pain if you are coming from far away. This was the case with Illinois.)

We then headed off towards South Dakota, where we would spend the rest of the day as well as the next.
Mitchell- home of the Corn Palace. Once considered as a posibility for the capital of South Dakota. This is a building used for basketball games, concerts, etc and the outside is decorated in corn and other plant material. Each year a different design is selected. Unfortunately the decorating was incomplete as they were preparing it for the upcoming festival. It was still pretty neat to see. Inside the building were pictures of other designs that they've had over the years.

After seeing all of Mitchell that we could (and there really isn't much to see other than the Corn Palace) we headed off to Wall, home of Wall Drug. Along the way we saw signs for the Pioneer Auto Museum. We decided to stop. Big mistake. The set up of this place was horrible. And the "informational" signs looked like something put together by a 10 year old. We definitely do NOT recommend this place. I think we left in less than an hour because it was that bad. The General Lee was pretty much the only good thing going for it.

We then continued on our way to Wall. We found a campground in town, about 2 blocks behind Wall Drug. It was a little sketchy looking, but it was cheap and convenient. After setting up the tent we crossed the train tracks and went to visit the Drug Store. Unfortunately, since it was later in the day, a number of the "attractions" seemed to be closed down for the day. That's ok though, we still seemed to get the flavor of the place. And here I am riding my first jackalope of the trip.