Day 4 - La Crosse, WI to Sioux Falls, SD

Last night I had these grandiose thoughts of trying to go to Minneapolis and the Mall of America before heading to Sioux Falls, but after calculating the mileage and the time I thought better of it and my butt thanked me profusely! It's a little sore, but maybe this will make it smaller! The threat of severe thunderstorms near Minneapolis may have had something to do with my decision too, although I had a run-in with the weather today anyway.

I started the day with my 3rd trip across the Mississippi, thankfully over a solid concrete bridge and not one of those terrifying steel grated bridges. The first 10-15 miles of Minnesota on I-90 were lovely, winding, and shady with lots of trees shadowing the road. After that, the road opened up to the plains, with many a wind turbine in sight, especially around Dexter, Minnesota where there was an extensive wind farm, or at least it looked extensive to me with at least 100 turbines in view. I stopped periodically to get something to drink since the temperature was in the 90's again today. At Blue Earth, MN there was a 56-foot tall statue of the Jolly Green Giant, which I later learned was a part of the celebration of the completion of I-90 in 1978. The next rest stop 2 miles down the road had a historical marker that told the story of the "golden spike" dedication of the completed interstate, reminiscent of the golden spike that signified the completion of the transcontinental railroad, except in this case, they made a section of the highway gold instead! How the Jolly Green Giant fits into all of this, I still don't know, but he showed up in Blue Earth for that event.

As I continued along I-90 I could see that the sky was darkening in the distance...really dark...like scary black. A good time to pull over for lunch, in Sherburn, MN. As I was pulling into the gas station/convenience store/Subway parking lot, I got hit with a huge gust of wind that almost knocked me over. Needless to say, it started pouring down rain as soon as I got inside. The weather forecast on the radio in Subway said that the National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for that area, with heavy rain, 60mph winds, and possible dime to quarter sized hail. We missed the hail, but we definitely got the wind and the rain, for about 45 minutes to an hour. The picture I included above was right before the full brunt of the storm hit - it looked like something out of the movie Twister! But after it stopped raining, the skies were clear and sunny again to the west.

I checked into my hotel in Sioux Falls around 4pm and then wandered back out again to see some of the city. Falls Park on the Big Sioux River was really amazing. (Science geek alert!) The whole area is based on the red quartzite you see in the falls, with the rocks being formed over a billion years ago. The bend in the river that caused the formation of the falls was a result of glacial activity 14,000 years ago during the last ice age, and the quartzite has resisted weathering and erosion by the river for over 10,000 years! They usd to take the prisoners from the jail and make them quarry the quartzite as punishment and to build up the walls of the prison.

After Falls Park, I went in search of the USS South Dakota Memorial (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10849). When the battleship USS South Dakota was decommissioned, they couldn't very well transport it to Sioux Falls, so they salvaged what they could, including the mast, anchor, propeller, and some guns and poured a 680-foot concrete outline of the ship and placed the salvaged parts where they would have been on the real vessel. The top picture above shows the view from the mast to the bow of the ship, all the way at the end of the green space in the photo. Pretty cool!

Tomorrow I head out across South Dakota on I-90 again, with stops in Mitchell, SD at the Corn Palace, Wall Drug in Wall, SD, and Sturgis, SD, before ending in Spearfish at Peggy and Bill's.