Yellowstone or Bust! Day 1

Saturday, June 22, 2013. Our first day of vacation has come to an end, and an exhausted group has retired for the night! My sisters, Deb and Gin, their husbands, Dan and Tim, Tim’s daughter Sierra and my grandson Dane and I all set off for our wild west adventure at 7:00 AM. We were not a lively crew, to say the least. None of us girls got much sleep preparing for the trip. At my house, Dane rolled in at 1:45 AM after seeing a movie with his mom so it was 2:00 before we went to bed. The alarm went off at 5:00, which was WAY too soon! I started filling bags with the perishable items from the refrigerator and freezer and loading the car. The back seat was full as well as the trunk and I was a little nervous that all my stuff, along with everyone else’s, would fit into the van we rented. We admitted later we all had the same worry, but with the rear seat out we had tons of room!

After some shuffling and rearranging, the van was ready to roll with the “Yellowstone or Bust” magnet Deb custom ordered proudly displayed on the back door. No one will wonder where we’re headed! Dane quickly made a bed on the cooler in back, and it wasn’t long before Sierra had a nest of her own among the luggage and sleeping bags. With the boys chatting it up in front and the kids sound asleep in back, us girls had some time to catch up a little. We made it a full hour and a half on the road before we broke out the cookies! Since I am currently unemployed (ugly story) I had some time to bake so we have an assortment of homemade Snickerdoodles, Peanut Butter cookies, Gingersnaps, Oatmeal Raisin cookies and Scotcheroos to snack on – over 15 dozen packed in those ubiquitous tins that everyone has at their yard sales and no one wants. Everyone except me, that is. They are the perfect disposable containers for vacation.

Now we faced the long drive across Iowa. Here is what we saw in Iowa: corn, corn, corn, Des Moines, corn, corn, road construction, corn, corn, windmills, corn, corn. We had a nice picnic lunch at mile marker 13 where there is a lookout tower with a sweeping view of the Missouri River valley. It was so windy at the top of the tower you could feel it swaying (as Dane and Sierra pitched their apple cores over the rail)! We all decided there needs to be an informational sign or placard there so you know what you’re looking at. No it’s not enough that it’s a beautiful view! Information, please!

We gassed up in Onawa, Iowa and Dan talked someone at the gas station (it may have been a customer) out of a cement block for Deb to climb onto to get into the van more easily. It is a tall step, and had been causing some giggles as Deb tried to get her short legs up high enough to maneuver into the seat. Problem solved – except now we are hauling a concrete block around. I’m sure Dan will talk someone out of a milk crate soon and we can ditch the cement. If not, it is the first souvenir we picked up on the trip!

Next stop, the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. Since we’ve been looking at corn all day, it seems like an appropriate destination. We watched the movie (see, we like information!), tried some corn snacks, shopped at the gift shop and watched the pigeons eat the corn off the building. We all found photos of the Corn Palace the year we were born, and we took lots of corny pictures. I love the onion domes on top of the building – if I had lots of money I’d have an onion dome or two on top of my house. But then you already know what a monstrosity my house would be if I were a rich person. It would be very…eccentric. Yeah, that’s it – eccentric!

Our lodging for the night is the KOA in Mitchell where we have 2 cute little cabins – one for the boys and one for the girls. Dinner was hot dogs, potato salad, chips and s’mores of course. After dinner, Sierra and Dane swam and played putt-putt golf until the thunder rumbled and the rain sent us into the cabins. Now I am sitting in bed listening to the soothing sound of rain on the roof (especially soothing since we aren’t in tents!) and a surprise spattering of hail. I am surrounded by my electronics on their chargers, and since I’m in the top bunk I’m not really sure how I’m going to untangle myself and get down. Ah, the challenges of life on the road! Goodnight all!