I had to take a photo of this sign. Luckily, we did not see any snakes, just lots and lots of grasshoppers.
This is the back side of a really big and nasty storm that hit the central and eastern part of the state. Several tornadoes and lots of damage were reported.
This is the launch site. It is now run by the Park Service and is part of a tour.
This is the silo where the missile is housed. The missile seen here is real but not armed. The location of the silo was several miles from the launch facility.
Tobi posing for a photo.
If you look through the glassed area you can see the missile. Obviously the glass and railing are for the protection of the tourists.
Me and Mr. Buffalo hanging out in the Wall Drug Backyard.
Tobi always wanted to ride a Jackalope.
Tobi was looking for a geocache, I was looking around and taking this photo.
On Friday, my friend Tobi and I set out on a wonderful and fun-filled road trip across the great state of South Dakota to attend our high school's 20 year class reunion. The plan was to leave around 11 and end up in Rapid City sometime around supper. I also need to point out that Tobi does geocaching. What is geocaching? It is kind of like a big game of hide a seek using a GPS locator. Items or "caches" are hidden in various locations and the GPS coordinates are uploaded into a website. Persons wishing to find the caches download these coordinates into a hand held device and go looking for them. Many of our stops were in order to find these caches.
We had decided to do lunch in Mitchell, SD which is about an hour and a half down the road. Both of us were quite hungry when it came time to stop. We decided to try this interesting looking sports bar and grill. I make mention of this stop because unfortunately for me it was full of every thing deep fried and breaded so about 95% of the food was off my can eat list. Not really wanting a salad (I'm not a fan of large salads with meat on them) but faced with no other options I ordered a small side salad...we're talking a little lettuce and cheese here. I so wanted to eat what it was Tobi got since it was waffle fries with nacho cheese, ranch type sauce, bacon, and onions. I also ordered water since I had pop in the car. When the bill came I must have looked like a total cheapskate since my total was $2.12.
After eating we headed back onto the interstate. Tobi also has a GPS device for her car. She had the voice set to sound like a squirrel. At one point we turned the squirrel off. As we were heading out of town, Tobi commented that her GPS kept wanting her to turn around (the sound was still off). I suggested the possibility that maybe we were headed the wrong way. Sure enough, a check of the next interstate sign showed we were headed East, back toward Sioux Falls instead of West towards Rapid City. Well after the 14 mile detour (7 miles before we hit an off ramp to turn around) we were back on our way. We also turned the squirrel back on.
We did not start looking for any geocaches until after we had crossed the Missouri River. Tobi had not done any geocaching past that point so once we were West River, we started looking. Our intent was to only stop at rest areas or pull overs along the side of the road. The photo of the snake sign was taken at a rest area I call the "middle of nowhere stop" We were looking for a cache hidden somewhere and would have to cross a freshly mown field. We did not find either snakes or the cache. We are pretty sure it was located in the area with tall grass that could have snakes in it and neither of us had boots on. We did manage to get hit with lots of grasshoppers though. Actually, we had lots of grasshopper issues at our stops.
One of the stops we made involved an old missile launch facility. South Dakota had lots of them during the Cold War. They were truly hidden in plain sight as the signs claim. The one we visited was only a few hundred feet from the interstate. I have driven by those sites hundreds of times and never noticed them. The first part of the cache was the actual launch area which is the photo of the building. Part two was the actual silo site a few miles away. We met up with a family from Kentucky who were doing the tour of the missile sites. We decided to follow him on the interstate to the next location since he had a map and that was faster than downloading the coordinates into the GPS. I also took the storm photo at this location. I had been admiring the huge clouds for miles and decided that I should take pictures. The next morning (on the news)was when I discovered how nasty that storm was. One of the confirmed tornadoes was an F-4.
A few miles down the road we stopped at the actual missile silo. This on had the original missile but of course was disarmed. There was a glass covering over the top to keep people safe. I should also comment that it was really really windy out there. I'm sure some of it was due to the storm passing through but it is also really windy in the Central part of the state. Over all, this was pretty cool to visit.
Our other major stop was of course Wall, home of the world famous Wall Drug. Tobi had not been to Wall since she was a small child so she wanted to re-visit. We spent time walking around looking at all the people and different souvenirs in the stores. We also had to go the the back yard area and take some pictures. I decided that the buffalo looked pretty cute and Tobi really wanted to have her picture taken on the Jackalope. We also got our cup of free (not very good tasting) ice water. Tobi also wanted to see the dinosaur and of course there was a geocache hidden there so we spent several minutes there. She went looking for the cache and I took photos.
We finally made it to Rapid City and had a wonderful supper made by my dad. It was nice to see my parents since I haven't seen them in several months. Bryan had already left to go to Cheyenne,WY for a concert. Mom and Dad were due to leave the next morning to go to that same concert. After supper, we headed out to one of the local bars where the Class of 1990 (yes, I'm that old) was having a mixer. I didn't take the camera with so no photos. Actually, the music was really too loud to converse inside so we headed out to the patio and met up with my friends Jen and Jackie and their husbands were we spent the evening. At one point I was wondering why they kept playing Beetles songs. It wasn't until we were leaving that I noticed the sign saying the band Abbey Road was playing that night. Oh, that's why I kept hearing Beetles music.
We ended our night at Perkins. Just like old times, a bunch of us crammed in a booth eating and talking about anything and everything.
