"Lewis & Clark Expedition" - Pacific Northwest
	Day 5:  Wednesday, May 15, 2002

A weird day; mostly traveling, with some scattered stops here and there.  Much like the south, it seems there are few folks who are bold enough to post bumper stickers and witty license plates on their cars.  We did see one (on a California-plated car, of course) which was amusing, of sorts:  "Friends help you move.  Real friends help you move bodies."  That was about the only thing we saw aside of a few still in the convenience stores, and still for sale.  Something makes me think the folks out here are pretty sharp after all... I think bumper stickers make a car look trashy.

That moment aside, we got started relatively on time after I had an uncomfortable, yet secure, overnight accommodations.   (6:10am from a target departure of 6am), and managed to hit the Sioux Series -- that is, a collection of cities that have driven down the path of being staggeringly original and calling each of themselves some variety of "Sioux" in their name, to wit:

• Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Never saw a good city welcome sign, but we did find a make-shift monument to the USS South Dakota.  The monument was that of the bow (front) and stern (back).  Don't you love the propeller?  Of course, it would take more than one to power a battleship, but it's a nice gesture.  We also swung by the convention center, for those who think we may not have really found a fake, concrete battleship.
• Sioux Center, Iowa.  While taking pictures of the sign, some girl in a blue car was giving us funny looks.  So we took her picture, too.
• Sioux City, Iowa.  Well, at least this one has several distinct exits.
• North Sioux City, South Dakota.  Just another in the collection.
• South Sioux City, Nebraska.  We didn't do much more than go to prove the place exists.

Tucked into that collection, we also visited a couple of places in between the various Sioux townships... these, of course, were places where the founding fathers broke out of the Sioux rut and named their places something a bit more unique.

• We got to Iowa in the first place.  This charming little state wasn't really a planned part of the tour, but that's half the fun of these tours... just seeing where the road leads and go from there.
• Le Mars, Iowa.  While the place is small, I can't help but be amazed that this is the ice cream capital of the world, yet, I've never heard of it until today.
• Rock Valley, Iowa.  Also a delight.  In addition to a charming little park, we stumbled across a little girl running out to the edge of the road, but to no avail -- the school bus was already three blocks past her house.  I guess little Jenny won't be on time to school today...

Between Hartford (where we forgot to take any additional pictures) and Mount Rushmore, we encountered, by and large, nothing.  I did make the boy stop at the Badlands, but upon arrival, was very disappointed to find it was a national park sort of place, and not something that Simba was told to stay out of.  I wanted to be Simba, and to be naughty and go play in the Badlands.  As such, we moved on.

We arrived at Mount Rushmore National Monument around 3:30pm, and headed up to the monument itself immediately; after all, we weren't here to visit the quaint surrounding towns or anything, right?  So, there's all sorts of pictures of me looking at the rock dudes in the mountain.  (There's also this one and this one, but it's pretty much the same four rock dudes.)

After a stop into the gift shop, and feeling I was too heavy to be carried, I suggested the bald wonder put me in the bag.  He's no dummy, neither -- it only took him a few minutes to realize he still was carrying me, except now, I have handles.  (Pretty convenient, eh?)  We took 385 back up to Interstate 90, which led us through Deadwood, population 1380.  It had a rather quaint looking train station, building (city hall?) and

At last, we crossed back into Wyoming for the first time, for the last time.  80 miles and an hour later, we were in Gillette, the stopping point for the night.  I have several favorites of this place.  One is the city park -- it's got a pond (wish my home town had one of those).  I stumbled across the local drive-in theater as well.  My favorite is the children's matinee.  Of course, when I'm at home, the matinee is anything that starts before 6pm; here, I have no clue, and it ain't on the board, neither. Dinner was at the Pizza ut, which was missing the "H", for reasons for which I can only speculate.  Just an observation, but of the 13 vehicles here, 11 are trucks, one minivan, and our SUV.  Just thought it amusing.  Don't believe me?  The parking lot is here and here.

Back in the room, we're all turning in early (by 10pm), just to mix it up a bit from the beyond midnight bedtimes from the last few nights.  Which is why, in part, this is brief.  (But with sitting in the car and surrounded by farm land, if we were lucky, not too many sights to see; sorry...)