Fact: Day Twenty-One

We started today at Laura's house in Monona, Wisconsin and ended up in Mitchell, South Dakota.

It was 580-ish miles on our trip through 4 states. Well, not ALL the way through--we still have half of South Dakota still to get through. We had a nice, relaxing morning at Laura's chatting and wondering why we live so far apart--and about 10am we were all loaded up (minus Will's flip flops which we finally just gave up finding). We saw lots of fun stuff while we drove.

Like this:
WHERE ARE THE CHICKENS GOING?? This is an enormous truck full of chickens. I can't imagine a scenario wherein it is required to relocate live chickens like this. But it was highly entertaining nonetheless.



We crossed the Mississippi River and found...Minnesota! The weather was beautiful, it was really green, and we learned a few facts at the Welcome Center.
We are no longer embarrassed by the fact that Arizona has a State Balladeer. Thanks, Minnesota for having a state muffin. And a state mushroom that I did not get a photo of.
Watching the boats. That's a bunch of barges lashed together being pushed by a tugboat on the left.
This tugboat to be precise.
We swooped down into Iowa so we wouldn't miss it. Friendly sign, wouldn't you say?
This shows the scale of how flat Iowa is.
Saw this listed on the map so we decided to pull over and check it out. It's the highest point in Iowa.

At a breath-taking 1670 feet-above-sea-level, this is the view.Phoenix, AZ lies at about 1100 feet elevation. Someone has built this up really nicely--it was such a fun place. We stood on this spot and felt like King of the World. It was (not) SO high up!

The view in the other direction.
We got to sign in and leave a message--and buy a "Hawkeye Point" keychain.
They had this awesome collection of license plates from every state--the first is Iowa that says "HIGH PT", then it starts Alabama and continues to the right and ends with Washington, DC bringing up the rear (in case you want to sing the "50 Nifty United States" song with the handy license plate prompts like we did).

Because of our detour through Iowa, we didn't come into South Dakota on a road that had a welcome sign. So we have no photographic remembrance of South Dakota...yet. We'll get that tomorrow.

When we stopped for dinner, we saw that the Holiday Inn advertised "Water Slide" and we were hooked. So we got a room and the kids played for 2 hours until the life guard went off duty. Could be the best hotel indoor pool we've ever seen.

Matt at the lion.
Indooor/Outdoor water slide
Will at the top.
Matt jumping backward into the pool (I think--that doesn't look natural, whatever he's doing).
Tomorrow we go to Mt. Rushmore and the kids are VERY excited to relive a college experience that Jim had about 17 years ago. I'll tell the whole story tomorrow.

For tonight, I have one last anecdote:

Matt and I once again shared the middle bench for a leg of the trip today. We were playing with the Legos I got at the Dive and Dash and having a great time. At one point he sighed contentedly, leaned over and put his head on my shoulder, patted my arm in a reassuring manner, and said "I liked it when you were my mom. I wish you still were." A bit confused, I reminded him that I AM still his mom and he answered "Yeah, but when you're dead, I'll wish it. So I thought I'd say it now."