my trip
Mood:  happy
South Dakota


I was bitten by the “travel bug” some years back, and that’s why I’m constantly plotting and planning a trip to somewhere. My mode of transportation can be by auto, motorcycle, or air. I’m always searching the rental car websites for good deals. When I find that good deal, I go to my calendar, mark out some dates, book the car, and start mapping out my route. That’s how this road trip by car got started.

I live in St. Amant, Louisiana, which is about an hour’s drive out of New Orleans. On Tuesday, May 31, 2005, we went to the New Orleans airport around 11:30 a.m. and picked up the rental car. Got home and started loading things up. The original plan was to leave around 4:00 a.m. the following morning. I never etch my travel plans in stone, so naturally as the excitement built, our leaving time changed to 8:30 p.m. that same night.

Night 1: Once everything was loaded in the rental car, we headed to our local Sonic Drive-In, which is about five miles from our house, in Gonzales, for a quick bite to eat, and was officially “on the road” at 9:00 p.m.

I really enjoy driving at night because there is less traffic and it’s a lot cooler than during the day. You can’t see the sights as good, but our first 1,000 miles are always familiar territory anyway. As we were driving on I-10 east of Lafayette, Louisiana, however, we saw a total of six to eight deer eating on the side of the interstate. They seemed not to care in the least about all the traffic rushing by them.

Around midnight, we stopped for gas in Natchitoches, Louisiana, which was about 218 miles from home. We drove on to Shreveport, Louisiana, arriving at 1:00 a.m.

Day 1: Our first night’s drive had taken us through parts of Texas, and we arrived in Gainesville, Texas around 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday, June 1, having made approximately 530 miles. We stopped for gas and then stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast and a much-needed short break. We then continued on to Oklahoma, arriving at Oklahoma City at 7:30 a.m., another 128 miles.

There were quite a few oil wells pumping in Oklahoma and there were miles and miles of golden wheat fields.

We crossed into Kansas, then into Wichita around 9:45 a.m., and then we stopped in Newton for gas.

We crossed the Nebraska State Line at 12:30 p.m. Shortly after crossing the state line into Nebraska, we stopped and made sandwiches for lunch at a roadside pullout in Hebron, Nebraska. This pullout was along the old Oregon, California, and Pony Express Trail.

When we drove through York, Nebraska, we couldn’t help but notice all of the flags that had been placed on every light pole in town, on both sides of the street, for approximately fifteen miles. There were about fifteen flags every one-half mile, on both sides of the streets. The flags had been put up for Memorial Day, and they were flapping proudly in the wind.

We stopped in Columbus, Nebraska around 3:00 p.m. to refuel and stretch our legs a bit.

Nebraska had miles and miles of fields that had just been planted with corn. Some of the stalks were just breaking ground, while others were maybe eight inches tall already.

All along the route, there were lots of old farm houses and barns. Some of them were in fair to good condition, and some of them had definitely seen better days. This is windmill country, and again, some of the windmills were in good working condition, and others had not been operational for years.

There were chipmunks, rabbits, and pheasants eating out in the fields. There were a lot of birds that were flying low and seemed to be making a game of seeing how close they could swoop down in front of a vehicle and then fly off without getting hit.

We finally arrived in Yankton, South Dakota at approximately 5:30 p.m. for the night. We found a Super 8 Motel and got checked in. We were too tired to go very far for supper, so we inquired at the hotel check-in desk about the restaurant that was right next door. The lady told us it was a Mexican Food Restaurant and that the food there was really good. We told her we might just give it a try. I guess we were too tired to be thinking straight, because after further consideration, we decided that Mexican Food in South Dakota was not at all what we wanted to try. We then drove to a steak house, and that didn’t suit our fancy either, so once again, we made sandwiches for supper and called it a night.

At this point, we had been driving for 17 hours and had 1,213 miles behind us.

Day 2 - After getting a really good night’s sleep, we were on the road again at 6:25 a.m., leaving the Super 8 Motel in Yankton, South Dakota around 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 2. Our destination was the world’s only Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. And yes, we saw fields and fields and more fields of corn en route to the Palace. The fields that didn’t have corn planted in them were being used for cattle grazing. We arrived at the Corn Palace at 8:15 a.m.!

The Corn Palace is a pretty unique place. Some “A-maiz-ing Corn Palace Facts” are:

∙ It’s redecorated every year sporting a new theme.
∙ 600,000 pieces of corn are used to decorate the outside each year.
∙ 3,000 bushels of grains and grasses are also used each year - milo, rye and sour dock.
∙ Nine different colors of Indian corn are used to create the mural pictures.
∙ Over a ton of nails, staples and wire are used to fasten the corn and grasses.
∙ Approximately $100,000 is spent each year for redecorating.
∙ Cal Schultz, a local artist, has been designing the Corn Palace murals since 1977.

They don’t waste anything to decorate the Palace. They use the corn, the husks, and the cobs, both on the inside and the outside of the building to make different murals and designs. Needless to say, the birds in the area are all over the building to get free handouts.

We left the Corn Palace with a destination of Badlands, South Dakota. We had to stop in Oacoma for gas. Then the next gas stop was in Cactus Flat. Out in this sparsely populated part of the country, when you see a gas station, you’d better stop and top off your tank. There’s no telling how far the next gas station might be down the road.

The Badlands National Park is a truly awesome place. It’s well worth the drive to get there. There are herds of buffalo roaming around, as well as antelope. The most plentiful residents of the Badlands though are the prairie dogs. They have built their little villages all throughout the park. You can stop and watch them, and they, in turn, will sit and watch you back.

We were lucky to have had good weather all day because we could see dark storm clouds all around us.

Once you leave the Badlands, the country side changes drastically. It turns into green rolling hills that are filled with cattle.

We left Badlands and crossed back into Nebraska around 2:30 p.m.

We drove 58 miles and crossed into Wyoming at 5:25 p.m., then drove another 22 miles to Lusk, Wyoming, where we refueled and stayed for the night. The Best Western that we stayed at in Lusk was originally built in 1936 as the Pioneer Motel. It has recently been remodeled and was a very clean, nice, safe, and friendly place to stay. They have free refreshments in the lobby at night, and a big continental breakfast in the morning. They offer six kinds of cereal, several types of fresh fruit, coffee, juice, bread, biscuits, gravy, and a variety of pastries. If you prefer to leave the next morning before the breakfast is ready, you can make prior arrangements to get a “go box”. The owner of the Best Western walks at night and he invites anybody who is interested in going to meet in the lobby at 8:00 p.m. They walk through the town and he points out several places of interest. But as luck would have it, he had to “mind the store” the night that we stayed there and so the nightly walk was off. He recommended a pizza place to us and told us we could walk there by ourselves with no fear of being bothered by anybody. He was right on both accounts. We walked one mile round trip and then went to eat some of the best pizza ever.

Total driving miles for today was 560.

Day 3 - We really enjoyed our continental breakfast this morning at the Best Western, and we left Lusk, Wyoming on Friday, June 3, at 6:15 a.m., headed to the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The sun was already high up in the sky, and the temperature was 39◦, with a wind chill of 33◦.

Before we got out of the city limits of Lusk, we saw herds of antelope eating in the fields, and the remains of the old Lusk drive-in theater. Then there were more green, rolling hills along the way.

We arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, 157 miles from Lusk, and off in the distance you could see snow capped mountains. Again, we saw more antelope herds.

We crossed the Colorado State line at 8:45 a.m. We stopped at a visitor’s center in Loveland, Colorado and ended up talking to a couple from Abbeville, Louisiana, which is not too far from where we live. Their grandson was in the Air Force and was stationed nearby. They were in Colorado visiting him. They said they had brought fish, crawfish, and other Cajun delicacies to cook for their grandson and some of his friends on base. What a treat that must have been for a homesick guy so far from home.

Sometimes trips have disappointments in them. Our disappointment on this trip came when we reached Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, at approximately 10:45 a.m. We pulled up to the booth in the road to pay our park entrance fee, and the attendant told us the park was closed! He said a storm had come through and caused a rock slide on Trail Ridge Road the day before (naturally!), and that part of another road in the park had snow drifts, so everything was shut down. He said they were waiting on a break in the weather so they could repair the roads and reopen the park. This, we were told, could be within the hour, or not until the following day. There were black storm clouds all around, so we didn’t see any way that the park would be open any time in the immediate future.

We went inside the visitor’s center and the park ranger told us when the park had opened two weeks ago, the temperature had been 80◦. He said they have a saying in the park, that they have two seasons, winter and July.

We saw two big elk walking across the road near the visitor’s center, and they were just taking their time getting across the road. They weren’t bothered or hurried by the vehicles or by the people.

We were south of Estes Park on Highway 7 headed to Mount Evans, when we got caught in a rain and hail storm! We stopped on the side of the road to try and get the rental car under a tree so as not to have the hail damage the car. As soon as it slacked up a bit, we continued on our way. By this time, the sky all around us was black. We decided to try one more time to get to Mount Evans, so we turned around and headed back. Yep, you guessed it, we ran into the hail storm once again, and this time the hail was larger than before. We made a quick turn in the road and headed in the other direction as fast as we could to outrun the hail storm.

We got on the Denver by-pass, still trying to outrun the massive storm that was behind us. We saw on the weather channel later that night that Denver had had six inches of rain in an hour and all the streets had been flooded. We were going east to Limon on I-70. We then headed south towards Amarillo, Texas on Highway 40, out of Limon.

We drove through the East Colorado High Plains Country for miles and miles. These were open plains with cattle, very few trees, and even fewer houses. We went through the town of Kit Carson, which is a small and very old town.

We stopped at 5:45 p.m. for the night in another small town called Eads, Colorado.

Day 4 - We left Eads, Colorado on Saturday, June 4, at 5:40 a.m., heading south on Highway 287 towards Amarillo, Texas. We heard loud thunder and rain during the night, and it was cool this morning. Today we saw more of the plains country.

We crossed the Oklahoma State Line and drove through a few miles of Oklahoma, then crossed the Texas State Line at Kendrick, going south on Highway 287. There were more grain towns along this stretch of road.

We arrived at Dumas, Texas at 10:15 a.m. Both sides of the street were lined with people. Some had balloons, some had flags, and they were all waiting on a parade to start. It seemed like the whole town had come out for the parade. We made a note to check on the Internet when we got home to find out what the celebration was all about. It turns out that the festivities were for the 59th Annual Dogie Days Celebration.

We arrived in Wichita Falls, Texas at 3:00 p.m., and boy what a change in the temperature. It was just downright hot here.

We crossed back into our home State of Louisiana at 8:14 p.m., and on Sunday, June 5, 2005, we arrived home at 12:40 a.m.

Our total miles on this trip was 3,392.