They mention this really awesome looking world’s largest bison buffalo in Jamestown, North Dakota. Y’all may remember North Dakota is on our 5 as-yet-unvisited states list (with Nebraska, Iowa, Alaska, and Hawaii) — so I know what we’re doing next time we take a vacation. The whale in Catoosa, Oklahoma, sounds pretty cool, too. We’ve only visited a couple of places on this list: Paul Bunyan in Bangor, Maine, and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine Rolled by a Single Person in Darwin, Minnesota.

As always, we have a backlog of photos and other fun things to post. Turns out that moving halfway across the country, traveling constantly for business, grieving a loved one, and working full-time isn’t as conducive to pleasure blogging as being on a 6-month vacation. Who knew?! But we figure eventually things will stabilize a bit and we’ll be able to share more. Thanks for staying tuned!

Here’s the Route Log:

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That little blip toward the end of our trip is the Badlands Loop. Be sure to check out those photos below.

On our way along I-90, we saw this:

Yep, it’s a giant cow head and also a giant flowerpot. Awesome! We wanted to take a closer look, but:

Alas, apparently this is some kind of awesome sculpture park, but we were thwarted by this sign. It was very sad, and I found the website so I know we missed some awesome stuff. Sad! But we had to persevere to our next destination:

The Corn Palace is a multi-purpose arena in Mitchell, S.D. The building features murals made out of corn. It’s quite a thing to behold. The murals on the outside are redone annually; they have a festival every year in August, and around that time, they start taking down the old murals and replacing them with new ones in the next year’s theme. A greeter at the palace explained to us that it’s tricky to get the corn just right — dried out just enough so it’s workable but not brittle.

The 2008 theme was Everyday Heroes (firefighters, police officers, etc.). 2009’s theme is, and I am totally not kidding, America’s Destinations!! The murals are going to feature the Corn Palace (natch), the Kennedy Space Center, the Statue of Liberty, the Space Needle in Seattle, Mt. Rushmore, a D.C. collage (holla!), the Crazy Horse memorial, the Hoover Dam, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the Alamo, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Grand Canyon. How appropriate!!!

They’re in the middle of putting up the new murals right now, so we had some of 2008’s murals and some of 2009’s to see, as well as some partially completed murals. Here is the front of the palace as it is today:

Here’s the Corn Palace’s mural of itself (very meta, Corn Palace). You can see the actual corn cobs here:

And here I am in front of the partially finished D.C. mural. The Corn Palace is big!

That’s going to be Lincoln on the left. Awesome!

We kept heading west on I-90 and eventually reached Chamberlain. Lewis and Clark made a stop here, and Ambrose and Clark did, too. Check this out:

The east side (which is the near side in this photo) is like normal midwesterny-looking farmland with grass and trees and the like, then you cross the Missouri river and suddenly you’re in rocks and hills and crazy South Dakota landscape. Brian and I could not get over it. And things just got weirder from there.

We had been seeing signs for miles for “1880 Town” and we weren’t planning on stopping there (honestly, we thought it looked pretty trappy from the copious billboards), but when we got in the vicinity, we realized we needed to take a break for nature, so we stopped. We still weren’t planning on going in, especially since they were semi-closed when we arrived, but things took a turn and we ended up going there. And guess what? IT WAS AWESOME!

It’s a bunch of actual buildings from the Old West (that were moved to 1880 Town) including actual antique furnishings and relics. You can go in the buildings and sit on the furniture and everything. I totally felt like I was walking around a real Old West town. There is an amazingly restored saloon that is the highlight of the place:

It’s beautiful and you can buy South Dakota sarsaparilla and sit in there and pretend it’s 1880. They also have costume rental so you can dress up and go take your own photo anywhere in the town! Awesome. We didn’t do that, but if we had arrived earlier we totally would have. You can see Jim the bartender in the photo above. He and his wife Marcie are working in 1880 Town for the season and then continuing on their RV travels around the country. We talked to Marcie for a really long time about our various travels. Marcie and Jim are awesome!

By the way, 1880 Town also has an entire huge setup of props from Dances With Wolves, if you’re into that sort of thing.

After we left 1880 Town, it was starting to get kind of late, and by the way Brian was really not feeling all that great at this point, but we made kind of an interesting decision once it was clear we needed to drive all the way to Wall if we wanted to find a decent place to stay. You see, there’s a little road that takes you off 90 down through the Badlands and back up to 90 at Wall. So we went that route even though it was a bit out of the way.

I really don’t know how to describe what was going on in the Badlands and how utterly surreal and bizarre it was to drive through them in the dark, especially without having ever seen them in the day. In fact, I haven’t even seen very many pictures of the Badlands. Since Brian and I figured out where we wanted to go on this trip, we have avoided looking at photos of the places we want to go as much as possible so we don’t get too spoiled. The road through the Badlands was almost totally deserted, and there are no lights or anything obviously, so we just had the bright moon and starlight, and we were driving through this weird road into these VERY weird-looking rock things that we could barely see at first. I was totally freaked out, honestly. I mean, it was like we drove to another planet, except that we kept seeing deer. We saw like 10 or 12 deer in the Badlands tonight. We saw a bunch of rabbits, too. That was a crazy juxtaposition, like, I think of deer and rabbits as being something I would see in Maryland or Virginia, not on Mars.

Once we started getting to crazy-ish looking stuff, we pulled the car over and broke out the tripod. This was before our eyes fully adjusted to the light, and we didn’t even really know what we were looking at, so when the camera finished its 10-second exposure, we were shocked, delighted, and in awe to see this:

All these photos from tonight are lit entirely by moonlight; we didn’t alter them in any way (though you can see some red in some of these from Pearl’s brake lights)! The camera is able to see a LOT more than our eyes could. Look at that sky and those stars!

I was so scared that I literally ran back into the car right after we took that one. I don’t know what it is, but whatever these rocks or whatever are (we’ll find out when we go in the daytime and can talk to people at the visitor’s center) make me nervous. I guess it’s that they are so foreign and so imposing… and also the fact that the utter silence and stillness out there kind of made me feel like I wasn’t supposed to be there or something. It’s hard to articulate, but hopefully you can get the sense of what I mean. It’s overwhelmingly strange in the Badlands.

Whew! I can see why a friend of mine got goosebumps just mentioning the Badlands to me when she heard about my trip. Brian and I are planning on returning in the daylight tomorrow or the day after (depending on how he’s feeling), and I bet we’ll have a completely different experience. Crazy Badlands!

Tonight we’re at a Motel 6 in Wall, S.D. It’s a bit touch and go at the moment in terms of Brian’s health. We’re definitely planning on staying two nights here so he can chill out and try to recover. Besides going back to the Badlands, we also have to visit a particular drugstore here in town. After that, we have tons of things on our list for South Dakota, so everyone please cross your fingers for Brian and hopefully we can move on on Tuesday!

Here is the ground we covered today:

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This would have been a beautiful drive had it not been for the rain.

The most famous and iconic sculpture there is the Spoonbridge and Cherry water fountain by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Our picture doesn’t totally convey the piece though because it was pretty blah weather today with lots of rain, but here you go:

There’s a whole indoor component to the garden as well, but we couldn’t go in there because they were holding a wedding reception. We actually ended up semi-crashing the wedding ceremony!

I’m not sure what was going on because we saw a ton of people wandering around in formal attire, but they seemed to begin the ceremony (in the rain) with only a few people there. There may have been two events, but I think they just decided to go have a quick ceremony with only a few wedding guests because of the rain. Anyway, if the happy couple happens to read this, don’t worry, you guys. I’ve heard a rainy wedding day is supposed to be good luck! (I didn’t figure out who the groom was, but the bride appeared to be handling the situation with aplomb.)

Anyway, we drove through some pretty cute parts of town trying again to get an oil change (we were eventually successful after 3 attempts!) (and by the way, the guy who helped us at Jiffy Lube was totally nice, but he had no idea where D.C. is. He kept asking what state it was in because he couldn’t find it in his computer when he was entering our address. Brian was like, “it’s on the east coast… it doesn’t have congressional representation…”), then we ventured on to our next destination!

We went to the Ellingson Car Museum in Rogers, Minnesota! It was so fun!! They have an array of vintage (restored) cars from before the 20s to the 70s. They even have a Delorean:

And, in case that’s not awesome enough, they also have a wide variety of non-car memorabilia including a collection of signs, cameras, TVs, and Barbie dolls. This “mod hair” 70s Ken is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen:

Next we ventured to Darwin, Minnesota, to see the quintessential roadside attraction:

Yep. That is the World’s Largest Ball of Twine! Or, at least, it’s the World’s Largest Ball of Twine Rolled by a Single Person. (Turns out there’s also a World’s Largest Ball of Twine Rolled by a Community. That one’s in Kansas.) Anyway, when we arrived today, we found out that Darwin also boasts a Twine Ball Museum & Gift Shop, but alas, we didn’t get there until after it was closed for the day. Sorry, Twine Ball Museum & Gift Shop!

After that, we spent several hours driving through Minnesota’s smaller highways in the rain. We did get to see some pretty countryside:

Everything is more difficult in the rain (uff da), but we did manage to get to Worthington, Minn., and we’re staying at (shockingly) another Super 8. I have to say, I’m not as psyched about this one as I have been about some of the others, but what can you do? We are in the middle of nowhere here, people. Tomorrow, we will definitely make it to South Dakota and we are very excited!!

Pretty awesome, eh? Uff da!

The Mall of America opened in 1992. I don’t know when I first heard about it, but I was 12 years old in 1992 and I do clearly remember thinking that 1. a mall with a roller coaster was about the awesomest thing I had ever heard of, and 2. I *had* to get to Minneapolis to check that out for myself. Granted, when I was 12, hanging out in malls was, like, one of my main hobbies, and my preferences have changed a bit since then, but let me just tell you: the Mall of America did not disappoint.

First of all, it has this:

Nickelodeon Universe: the only Nickelodeon-themed amusement park located inside a shopping mall. It’s a nice little amusement park with some good roller coasters. Brian absolutely fell in love with the Avatar Airbender, which I would have to agree is the best ride there (and apparently it opened on my birthday this past year! Actually, it seems several of the best coasters didn’t exist until the park became Nickelodeon Universe earlier in 2008!). Look at him go:

Yay! By the way, the barefoot dude next to Brian was our BFF on that ride. He had been on it about 7,000 times. Midwestern people are friendly!

The Mall of America also has this:

Actually this picture represents only a small part of the extreme awesomeness that is the Lego Imagination Center. It’s SO FUN. There are tons of complex Lego models and sooo many fun Lego sets you can buy. There are also play tables with Legos galore and little racetracks where you can build Lego racecars and then race them. Here are the cars we built!

Brian’s streamlined car on the left features an actual control panel/dashboard and some kind of flag thingy on the back. My car on the right features plastic seaweed (I thought they were cacti but I got schooled by a Lego expert later in the day). Unsurprisingly, Brian’s car won our race, but we did buy a little (Lego-shaped… natch) tub of pick-your-own pieces, so I can work on my Legoaerodynamics and hold a rematch at home.

We also went to the aquarium!

They are all about sharks at the Mall of America. Not only do they have a bunch of sharks there — including a particularly vicious shark named Jesse who has been involved in multiple shark-eating-shark incidents at the aquarium — right now they also are featuring an art exhibit of 56 glass sharks. Each shark represents a state or U.S. territory (and, PS, they totally consider D.C. a territory for the purposes of this exhibit). Anyway, it’s pretty cool, even if it was made for the RNC convention. Here is D.C.’s shark:

You can learn more about the exhibit and find your favorite state’s shark here!

Did I mention that we also went to, um, the mall part? Well, we did. In fact, we made a lap around each and every retail level. We didn’t go into a lot of stores, but we did enjoy a few highlights:

* Rybicki Cheese, where we finally got to sample some Wisconsin cheese (among Green Bay Packers merchandise).

* Minnesot-ah! Actually, this wasn’t really a highlight except for the name. Minnesot-aaaah. But the MOA features several Minnesota-themed shops replete with loons, wild rice, blueberry muffin mix, and something called chokeberry syrup.

* Lake Wobegone, U.S.A. The nicest woman of all time assisted us in this Garrison Keillor–themed store (bonus points for public radio affiliation, obvs) and taught us all about the Minnesotan terms “uff da” (the “oy vey” of the Midwest, apparently) and “hot dish” (casserole).

So anyway, today was totally fun and we are very tired but ready to persevere tomorrow and head toward South Dakota! We’re still at our Super 8 in Bloomington tonight. Woo hoo!

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No wonder today was boring.

We tried going to both Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire to find something interesting, but alas, there just wasn’t much for us. We didn’t do much research ahead of time to find anything awesome in this part of Wisconsin, so there may be great stuff around that we just don’t know about near where we were, but… another time, perhaps, Wisconsin. One interesting note is that we tried really hard to find a place where we could eat some Wisconsin cheese, but we were unsuccessful. It’s surprisingly challenging to find Wisconsin cheese in Wisconsin, apparently.

So anyway, now we’re in Minnesota!

We had a little housekeeping day today. I did laundry at a laundromat in St. Paul while Brian attempted to get Pearl’s oil changed (alas, that didn’t work out). Driving through Wisconsin all day, then doing laundry in some dubious neighborhood and driving around in search of Jiffy Lube in the rain (lots of crazy rain today, by the way) made us both kind of cranky and tired, so we found our Super 8 in Bloomington, Minnesota, home of the Mall of America, pretty early and are in for the evening already (and already feeling better). Tomorrow we should have more fun adventures to share!