Category: United States (Page 3 of 8)

As they say in New Orleans, “laissez les bon temps rouler” or “let the good times roll!”

We are off to the Bayou state this week for a week of exploring and Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

We have a lot packed in, per the usual…and basically eating our way through New Orleans with reservations made at some great restaurants most nights.

We start out with 3 days of Christmas explosion with lights, festivals, teddy bear tea, Christmas brunch and a Christmas fest at the convention center so hopefully Norah still feels like she’s making some great Christmas memories. The kid is also currently obsessed with Escape Rooms, so I booked like 4 different rooms for her this trip. She’ll be pumped…we’re going to be exhausted. Ha.

We drove down straight from Indiana to Picayune, Mississippi yesterday to be ready to start our first full day of sights today. About a 10.5 hour drive that took us 12 due to some traffic but overall not bad.

Nothing to note from the drive other than we picked out this amazing looking Cajun seafood crab boil food truck in Hattiesburg only to find out when we went to order that they changed their hours for December to be closed on Wednesdays. Booo. We’re going to try to hit it New Year’s day on our way home but they may be closed then too…

So, we got some okay Greek food and went to our hotel for the evening and were asleep before 10pm! Early for us.

Today, we started our day at the southern gem known as Waffle House. Norah had always had a strange affinity for Waffle House…ever since she was little, you’d think we’re taking her to Disney World. It’s hilarious.

She actually got a waffle this trip, with chocolate chips. She said it was good, but she only ate two bites. Who knows… ha

After breakfast we headed towards the INFINITY Science Center which is part of the NASA Stennis Space Center, NASA’s rocket testing launch center. They were scheduled to launch a rocket with the beginnings of the space telescope today, but it got delayed until at least Dec 25th… we tried to drive towards the launchpad to catch a glimpse… but we had to turn around due to gates and multiple signs telling us we needed to turn around 🙂 so…back to the visitor center for us. ha

They opened at 9 and we arrived a few minutes prior to that and hung out. We were the only guests in the whole museum for a while, so that was cool. It was a smaller, but neat, science exhibit geared towards kids- with random science based exhibits- hurricanes, flooding, carnivorous plants, small animal exhibits, a wave simulator, and the entire second floor was space related items.

Neil Armstrong’s training suit, Fred Haise’s (who is a local from Biloxi) suit, the Apollo 4 Command module- the first Apollo command module shot into space and returned to Earth. It was unmanned, but this tested the heat shielding and made sure the module would hold humans for re-entry. It paved the way for Apollo 7- the first manned Apollo command module flight to space.

Outside they had a Lunar Module and a F-1 Engine or “stage 1” burners from a Saturn V rocket- the Wernher von Braun (ex-Nazi) designed rockets that were the largest and heaviest, largest payload rockets we ever launched. Apollo 18 and Apollo 19 were scrapped because of the Vietnam War and costs… so we think this was a part of one of those unlaunched rockets.

We grabbed a couple of souvenirs from the gift shop, the coolest being a mission patch from Apollo 13- the mission Fred Haise was on, we thought that was fitting since he was the local star astronaut.

After leaving the science center, we crossed over the water into Louisiana.

Stopping by the Fort Pike historic site, but its closed to the public… we could see it from the highway, we couldn’t get any photos. It was part of the post- War of 1812 fortifications James Monroe ordered to better protect the Gulf coast, ports and Mississippi. Apparently its been closed since 2015 due to budget constraints in the state park system.

Next was a quick drive-by of something called the Fisherman’s Castle on the Irish Bayou. I have no idea what this is…but its pretty funny to see a tiny castle as a fishing house on the water. It apparently was built in 1981 for the World’s Fair and has withstood all the hurricanes since.

Our lunch destination was a place called Dong Phuong Restaurant and Bakery.

New Orleans has a huge Vietnamese population… and therefore tons of great Vietnamese options. We had spring rolls, egg rolls, Kegan had the traditional Pho, but I got adventurous and tried something that was a spicy fishcake and pork soup with udon type noodles. It was fantastic. The Pho was very very good… but honestly, I don’t think anything can top the richness and flavor of PhoShiki in Columbus, IN. It is legit the best Pho broth in the world. I’m convinced.

We popped into the bakery portion after eating to grab some breakfast items and just to see what they had, really.. they had tons of items, like King Cake- a mardi gras traditional cake- along with meat pies, crawfish pies, lots of refrigerated cream rolls and other cakes and buns… but since we had to leave everything in the car for a few more hours and didn’t know if our super fancy hotel would have a fridge… we just went with some shelf stable items.

We next drove by the old city airport- its currently the business airport. Very cool Art Deco building.

We drove on in towards New Orleans through Gentilly and to the Metairie area.

We stopped along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain along a seawalk area and Norah just HAD to take her shoes off and get into the water. Such as water baby. We told her to be careful becuase if either of us had to jump in that brown water to get her, no one was going to be having fun. ha

Across the street was the Mardi Gras fountain- a fountain dedicated to all the Krewes of the Mardi Gras Festival. Krewes are basically clubs that have formed in the city over the years, that perform philanthropy and community service throughout the year, but also build parade floats and toss trinkets and giveaways to parade watchers from them. The Krewe of Rex started it all back in 1872, just after the Civil War, a group of businessman got together and formed a group ahead of a visit from a Russian Grand Duke as a way to organize events and entertainment. The Mardi Gras colors we now know as purple, green and yellow are the Rex krewe colors. The gold “doubloon” coins tossed to the crowds originated with this krewe, too.

There are tons of formal krewes these days, most dating from the 1920s or 1940s… its pretty cool. Some krewes select a monarch or lead each year, like Rex crowns a “King Rex” from its members, a way to recognize a member that has been especially involved or giving over the last year. Some krewes crown celebrities as their lead for the parade and its usually a surprise not revealed until Mardi Gras day. The Krewe of Bacchus crowns a celebrity every year. Past kings included Drew Brees, Hulk Hogan, Andy Garcia, Will Ferrell.

After getting back in the water again for “nostalgia later in life” as Norah put it, we headed into Metairie area- the suburban soccer mom shopping mall capital two days before christmas- likely the last and biggest traffic jam day of the year. and boy was it busy. I didnt account for all the Mercedes and Porsches out shopping when I planned my itinerary.

But, we made it to Vivi bubble tea to kill some time before our reservation at Club Carré Metairie for an escape room. Super cute place with tons of drink options. Kegan got the standard thai milk tea with black boba (or chewy tapioca pearls)- Norah got a strawberry fruit tea – her go to- with Yogurt popping boba… something we had never seen before and she was adventurous enough to try it out. I got a Kumquat Lemon Jelly Tea which at the half sweetness I ordered was really sour but really good.

We still had an hour until our escape room reservations, so I decided to squeeze in a drive by of the Metairie cemetery. New Orleans is famous for its above ground crypts instead of underground burials. Obviously because the water table is so high. They used to try to add stones inside the coffins or on top to try to weigh it down. That didn’t work. They tried drilling holes in the coffins to keep them underground in a flood, but that didn’t either. So, eventually they followed the Spanish tradition of using the above ground vaults. Something I didn’t realize until reading about this, the vaults are sometimes for whole families, not just individuals. They have a rule that if the person has been dead for over two years and another family member dies, the first family member coffin can be removed and the bones placed in a bag at the rear of the vault. Then, the newly deceased person put into a coffin in the space. If it’s within two years, the cemeteries usually have a holding vault they can be kept in until the time has passed to “swap” the bodies. What a strange custom! Very interesting.

We sat in heavy traffic again back to the escape room spot, but made it in time. I know its not normal traffic levels because that was the first question we got when we got inside was “how did you do in all that christmas shopping traffic today?” ha

Our Escape room today was The Naughty List at a place called Clue Carré in Metairie (pronounced MET-a-ree all run together like we do in Indiana or Kentucky.) It was a Christmas themed escape room where you have 60 minutes to try to break into Santa’s office and erase your names off of the naughty list before Santa returns. It was very cute… and Norah had a blast. She even solved some of the riddles and opened some locks. The girl that was watching over us said “oh my god. she’s so smart! I couldn’t believe the things she was getting in there!” Yep. Same girl. Same. ha

We did escape- with 20 whole minutes to spare! Safe to say we rocked that one and we are no longer on Santa’s naughty list (so we thought!- more on THAT later…).

After that, we headed downtown to check into our hotel. Also, a total zoo. Apparently when you book a hotel for its well known Christmas deocrated lobby and its christmas themed events, everyone else in New Orleans is gathered for those same events 🙂 We spent a bit in traffic and then a while winding our way up the parking garage across the street before heading into the madhouse of a hotel lobby. My digital key still hadn’t arrived on my phone, so I had to find the front desk and speak to them. They told me it was because I had only booked checking in Dec 24th! Queue the panic. lol

However, I was able to show my confirmation email, my print outs, my apps, etc- all showing Dec 23rd. Whew, I didn’t screw it up! ha It took a while and a manager and all that, but they did get us in for the evening and all is well.

The room isn’t really anything too fancy but it’s nice enough and it does have a hot water kettle, a Nespresso machine and some nice toiletry items…but overall first impression- not worth the cost. But #memories and all that 🙂

All of that took up our dinner time though prior to our drive through light show and festival I had timed entry for, so we made a last minute switch from a sit down place near the lights event, to carry out fried seafood baskets from the Fiery Crab right next to our hotel. No photos available because we ate and drove in the dark to our event, but Kegan got a shrimp po’boy sandwich, I got fried oysters and cajun fries- oysters were really pretty good! and Norah went conservative with chicken tenders and fries. ha

The drive through lights were an event called Celebration at the Oaks, which is all through City Park which has been blocked off. They had a lot of fun NOLA themed light displays that we laughed at and enjoyed.

The best was as we neared the end, we saw the real Santa Claus waving to kids as we passed… but then it showed his list on a big monitor… Norah was on the good list, but Kegan and I were still on the naughty list! How rude!

Norah was hilarious.. “but…how did he know our names..” and Kegan would just say “Christmas Magic” and then she’d wait a second…”but really.. how did our names get up there??” It was killing her that she couldn’t put it together haha Eventually we had to tell her that when we bought tickets, they asked our names and then when we arrived they scanned our QR code and then stuck an RFID card in our dash and then when we got near Santa, it was read off the reader hanging down out of a tree we drove under. Then she felt better… but Kegan was disappointed she wasn’t just happy with “christmas magic” ha

After the lights, there was an option to add on the Carousel Gardens festival. It was more like an old timey amusement park with some rides and tons of lights along really cute brick paths. They had free hot chocolate stands and cute Christmas music streaming everywhere.

The highlight though was that as we’re waiting in line for a photo of Norah on a giant Christmas alligator, Kegan looks over and says “hey that guy just proposed to that girl”.. he saw him get down on one knee. I was totally oblivious and would have never noticed any of it… I thought, oh, how cool! but then was like, Oh man! I should take a few pictures for them! I hustled over and tried to capture as much as I could since he was already up off one knee… then tried to hang around long enough to not totally interrupt their moment to be able to get their number to text them the photos if they wanted them. Well, now we’re Facebook friends and I get to see how their love story plays out 🙂 She was a sweetie and was totally shocked a stranger would capture that moment for them. ha I text Scotty Perry- the awesome photographer friend of mine and asked him if he could do some fast editing to try to make my crappy iPhone photos look a little more magical… he of course hopped right on it and sent me back brighter better versions than the photos I took to share with them. People are great sometimes.

Norah rode rides. She loved the Wacky House- just a little kid funhouse with a slide at the end, but she also rode the carousel, the bumper cars… and even got out of her comfort zone and rode the swings! I was impressed. Then asked to ride them again because she loved them. The swings were always one of my favorite rides as a kid too.

We drove back downtown to the Roosevelt hotel and this time decided to just valet the car until the 26th. ha the extra $10/day was worth not fighting with the parking garage again. ha

Tomorrow we have the Teddy Bear Tea in the morning, we visit the Aquarium, have another escape room booked and dinner at a nice downtown restaurant called Luke’s. We may ride the St Charles street car to see the houses and lights all along that famous street…or we’ll come back to the hotel and watch a Christmas movie to finish out our Christmas Eve….. we’ll see how we feel!

Hey everyone! Its officially Fall Break today and we are headed out for a fun trip to New York!

In true McKinney vacation fashion, I have our itinerary jam packed to see as much as we can in our week there. And also, in true McKinney vacation fashion, we’ve already had tons of fun travel issues. ha

This is another “free” vacation. We are booked for 8 nights at the Holiday Inn Times Square in Midtown. I had been keeping airline points active for a few years trying to find a destination we were going to that I could actually use American points but struggled since about 2018. There are always 2+stops or terrible flight times, etc… Finally in 2020, I was prepared to let them expire and just lose the points…and Covid allowed them to be extended again! And so in the depths of the Covid New York lockdown, I was able to use the points to book 3 round trip tickets non-stop from Cincinnati. So all was well until 2 days ago when American cancelled our flight to LaGaurdia. Stuck us on a flight to Washington, DC that had a 20 minute layover and a connection that required going through security or a bus to get to the next flight. Not happening. ha Then…they had the audacity to overbook the flight to DC and asked if anyone would like to move to another flight. Well, none of the alternates they offered online worked for us. So, I called them because I saw that Indianapolis still had a nonstop to LaGuardia open for Saturday morning. 2 hour wait to speak with someone. (It’s 10pm) Ok, mark my place in line for a callback. I get a callback around midnight, the lady is super quick and seems on it! I tell her I’d like to switch to the Indy flight, she says sure- let me check with our booking line to make sure I can do that for you. Puts me on hold. For an hour. and. 10. minutes….before I finally gave up, hung up, called the line again and got back in the queue. Now only a 30 minute wait! ha They call me back-now 1:45am or something silly, I explain to the lady from my sleepy stupor that the connection is BS and we’ll never make it and I’d like to change to Indy and she starts arguing with me that there is no way I’d have to go through TSA again on a domestic flight (which I agree is REALLY weird and I wouldn’t have believed either… except I looked on the airport’s own website under “connecting flight info” where they expressly state I’d have to go back through security. ha AND… I looked on Reddit to see if anyone was asking about minimum connection times. I’m definitely not crazy. about this subject anyway. ha. So, after that, she was very helpful and rebooked us on the Indy flight (which was good, because when I went through the motions to purchase the tickets to check the information it showed they would cost me $4100 to book that flight!)

So, had to cancel the Cincy hotel, cancel the Cincy dinner reservations (which was very disappointing for Norah because I had picked out a place that had Belgian Waffle desserts and she was pumped), then make an Indy hotel reservation…but here we are in Indy, flying out on a 7:30am flight to NYC!

For dinner tonight, we kept it pretty simple since I didn’t have any time to make reservations anywhere too fancy. We had a really good time at Homey Hot Pot with cousins a few weeks ago, so we went there again. It’s at 38th St and Lafayette Road and they have a huge buffet of raw seafood, meat and vegetables that you bring back to your table and cook in a soup broth that is boiling on a burner built into your table.

I got the spicy broth and as you can tell from the photo, I had already made a mess when I dropped a piece of beef with broth all over it on the table and into my water glass. haha You cant take me anywhere.

After dinner, we got to our hotel, I realized I forgot to pack socks for Norah. Whoops, so out to the store I went for socks. ha Hopefully that’s all I find I forgot!

Our basic itinerary looks like:

Saturday- Midtown- Penn Station, Rockefeller Center, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Grand Central, New York Public Library, Bryant Park, Times Square, etc.

Sunday- Hudson River cruise to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island as well as some famous bridges and sites, then lower Manhattan/Wall Street, ending in Chinatown

Monday – Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Tribeca, NYU, FlatIron District, Central Park

Tuesday – Metropolitan Museum of Art and seeing Wicked on Broadway

Wednesday – American Natural History Museum, Harlem, North Manhattan,

Thursday – Queens/Flushing for some World’s Fair and historic sites as well as some great ethnic food, Roosevelt Island

Friday – Train upstate and driving around small towns- seeing a friend/coworker for lunch in Woodstock

Saturday – Brooklyn and DUMBO, meeting a friend from high school for some coffee or ice cream (depending on the weather) and maybe visiting Coney Island in the afternoon/evening

Sunday we head back home early morning and we’ll see if we are exhausted of the city or ready to make a move to New York! ha

Notably missing from the itinerary- Staten Island, Long Island, The Bronx and Jersey… not enough time to fit it all in. Guess we’ll just have to come back again 🙂

I’ll try to post every day, but my posts may be delayed because Saturday and Sunday are pretty loaded! It may take me until Monday night to get caught up 🙂

Here is the Google Map of my planning. Green is an interesting site or restaurant I have marked from research …and the blue dots are things we are booked to do on this trip. We are going to be busy 🙂 But I’m pumped.

Our drive today into Minnesota from Sioux Falls was a quick one. ha Just 15 miles or so outside of Sioux Falls to the East and you’ve arrived in Minnesota. Another state Kegan and I hadn’t been to before! So, now the only states I haven’t been to are: North Dakota, Rhode Island and Alaska. For Kegan, it’s North Dakota, Alaska, Delaware and most of New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine)- we’ll be fixing that on our Northeast road trip either next summer or Summer 2023 hopefully

Our first stop in the morning was in Blue Earth, Minnesota at the Jolly Green Giant statue, park and museum. Blue Earth is the home of Jolly Green Giant – which was started in 1903 as the Minnesota Valley Canning Company. In 1925, a new variety of pea was created- the Princes of Wales- which was huge and wrinkly. Instead of apologizing for the size of the new peas, they leaned into it – calling them “Green Giant” peas. In the 1930s they got a marketing makeover and the Green Giant scary caveman character turned into the Jolly Green Giant- a friendly approachable guy in a leafy suit.

They renamed themselves the Green Giant Company in the 1950s and eventually were purchased by Pillsbury, then General Mills, then to B&G Foods in 2015 for 765 million! This giant statue came into the picture in the late 1970s. A local radio show host used to interview out of town guests who were passing through the town and he’d give them canned vegetables as a little prize for doing it. ha When the I-90 Interstate came through, the number of out of town visitors was dropping dramatically and he noticed! So, he came up with the idea of a giant Jolly Green Giant statue to attract people off the interstate and back into town. Seems to have worked 🙂

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Back on the road, but off quickly to see a really random and odd Godzilla statue

Just up the road from Godzilla was a Happy chef restaurant. Local one and only remaining restaurants from an entire chain- with a giant chef out front from the 1960s that supposedly talks- but we didn’t know there was a button to press to make him talk until after we were gone! Poor research, Erin!

Trucking on up to Minneapolis, we passed the World’s Largest Candy Store, so of course… we stopped in! This place was packed to the gills. and it seems like its in the middle of nowhere. ha No idea why there were so many people visiting this place.

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We ended up with 4 bottles of root beer, Fox’s Jam Creme cookies from Ireland, Crab flavored potato chips, a couple Haribo gummies that are hard to find here, cinnamon gummi bears, Walker’s Shortbreads, Japanese cracker peanuts, a few things Norah wanted to try- like Zotz fizzy candy I loved as a child- and I got a couple small sugar free things to try. I usually hate all fake sugar but 3 months removed from any candy or sugar I thought I might give it a try.

Our destination for the day was The Mall of America in Minneapolis. I had never been here and I remember years ago people used to plan whole weekend trips around going here for back to school shopping or just spending time at the mall. We had just figured we didnt have a lot of time to actually see the city and we are just here for tomorrow morning’s tickets to Paisley Park to see the home/studio of Prince before jetting home.. so Mall of America sounded like a fun afternoon for Norah.

I gave Norah some choices on what to do- Nickalodeon rides….arcade games… Fly Over America ride… She chose arcade games.

I was very disappointed that over half of the game machines were out of order. Literally over half, not an exaggeration. I’d say 30 games didn’t work. Also, we were there over an hour and all the signs talked about cleaning and CDC guidelines, etc. Not one machine was touched by anyone with cleaning supplies. ha It was a mess of a place. But you may think, “hey – this must just be an exception. Maybe it’s just an off day” You would be wrong. Let’s continue. ha

So, we couldnt find anything else Norah wanted to play, so we gave the card with credits still on it to another family and headed to Fly over America before they closed for the evening.

We stood in line to buy tickets 10 minutes, then got ushered into a series of 3 other lines, to finally get on this simulation ride where it is supposed to seem like you are flying over major landmarks in America. About 30 minutes, we finally get in and I hear a girl working say “are they supposed to be in row 3?” and another guy says “Row 3 is a last resort”

Hmmm…Ok…. we go in, we get seated and the gates in front of us drop and the ride starts forward. and then dies. We sit there in silence for 5 minutes. Everyone else’s seats (except Row 3 where we were) moves back to normal… but ours stays there and our gate stays lowered. Finally someone manually lifts the big heavy metal gate and rolls our set of seats back.

I tell Kegan “make sure when this starts again- if that gate doesnt drop, you pull your legs up- make sure Norah does too!” I can just see some malfunctioning ride in a mall run by 17 year olds chopping off someone’s legs. And their previous comments about “row 3 is a last resort” didnt have me feeling good.

Someone finally comes by and says “you can either stay for the next show and see both America and Hawaii or we can give you a refund.” (Never asks us to get up or leave or explains any issues… ha) So we quickly said “refund please!” and headed to the exit.

So…. with $61 back in hand (a ridiculous price for a ride, by the way) I told Norah she could use it to buy something else since we couldn’t do that and she was a little bummed. So, she went in a little toy shop and was looking around for something to buy. The shelf fell off the wall when we were standing there, by the way. haha This place is literally falling apart.

So, I started searching- there has to be a better toy store in this whole mall- and I’m reading off a list of stores and Build-A-Bear is mentioned. Immediately- THIS is the store we need to go to! ha I was surprised, she has never been into dolls or really that into stuffed animals and I thought we were through this phase….but apparently not!

We hurried up to Shake Shack on the 3rd floor for a quick dinner. It was 6:45 and the malls closes at 7 on Sundays. We got our food and inhaled it in about 4 minutes to get over to our reserved Escape room time!

This was by far, the coolest and most techy escape room we’ve ever done. Norah is obsessed with these now and any time she sees one, she’s all about it. We did the Mission to Mars where everything was electronic, screens, an escape pod, we had to restore Oxygen, Communication and Power before we could lift off of Mars and return to Earth. We escaped in 45 minutes (out of 60) but we did get 4 hints from the guy outside the room. 3 of them were things we were already working on but weren’t working right, like we were supposed to move a laser point with a joystick, but it didn’t move… but 1 was a legit hint we would have been stuck on a lot longer.

After the Escape room, it was 8:15p or so, so we headed out to our hotel near Paisley Park for our tour the next morning.

My overall thoughts on Mall of America – I’m sure it was amazing in its heyday… but now its just a rundown version of its old self. Needing a lot of maintenance and upkeep that no one is willing to do because its a for-profit business and I’m sure like all malls in the country, they aren’t seeing the patronage of 25 years ago. I’m sure eventually it will go the way of the dinosaur, too and we’re just slowly watching it get there. It was disappointing. But… maybe it is a good symbol for America. Great plans and big ideas, executed poorly to maximize profits to the rich while doing just the minimum to keep them above breaking safety laws. ha Yeah. It’s actually very fitting come to think of it!

Day 25 – FINAL DAY

We booked a 9:25am tour at Paisley Park to see the home/recording studio and general weirdness of Prince. Kegan loves Prince and specifically asked if we could go by Paisley Park on the road trip. haha So… here we are.

I’d love to show you a lot more photos, but they legit take your phone, make you shut it off, lock it in a sleeve and give it back to you- then they wand you to make sure you don’t have any other electronics. Like- legit odd. So, the inside looks a lot like the outside. White- tall- 80s modern… I was disappointed that the tour only showed one main atrium area with a couple offshoot areas, Studio A, then a dance studio room converted into a shrine to Purple Rain, then a room converted to hold all of his custom shoes- which seemed to be what most people were there for. Then, we were led on into a stage area and lounge club. All areas that anyone public could have gone to anyway if they were a music club member or saw a show here. There was no private quarters or anything that felt like it wasn’t just a commercialized reason to get people to come give their money. I was totally disappointed in the lack of information given about his music or his lifestyle. Everything was very “Prince was awesome” but no info on why he was awesome… or any specific songs recorded in a certain space…no oddities given… which you know there are TONS of weirdo comments that could be made about anything to do with him. There are tons of stories out there already that could have been told- a couple I’m aware of. Kevin Smith- famous director for Clerks/Mallrats/Chasing Amy, etc… he was asked by Prince to make a documentary about his life. He spent a good year making this, editing, etc… sends the final cut to Prince for review.. and his team says basically “ok. thanks. send us everything you did, all the film, etc. Here’s your check.” Prince never wanted to release it. He just wanted to see the documentary and have it for himself! ha. There are tons of stories about calling in his personal chef at 2am, asking them to have a 5 course meal ready for 20 people by 5am. Dave Chappelle’s Chappelle Show has an interview with Charlie Murphy (Eddie Murphy’s brother) about back in the 80s meeting Prince and his crew at a club and getting invited back to Paisley Park to play basketball. Charlie Murphy says they changed into basketball clothes and Prince and the Revolution came out on the court still wearing all their over-the-top get up and heels from the club. ha Then after Prince BEAT them at basketball, he made them all pancakes. haha I have no doubt every bit of this story is true.

The tour just felt generic, I guess. Or like they were embarrassed of his eccentricity to the point that they just didn’t talk about any of it. That’s what made him HIM. I don’t think he would have approved if he were alive. They played a clip of “unreleased” music that was EXCLUSIVE *eyeroll* that literally was playing on the Sirius Prince Radio channel when we got back in the car.

They did give us our phones back right at the end in the studio/stage area so I snapped a few things.

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Kegan tried to buy some vinyl in their gift shop, but they didn’t have either of the two albums he wanted. So, with our tour over, we set the GPS for home- a 9.5 hour drive from here- with one last stop on the way- The Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota!

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Tons of history about Spam and how people eat it in other countries. How it fed the troops in World War II…very well done free museum.

We were really dropping in to hopefully grab weird random Spam flavors like Jalapeño… or Pumpkin Spice (supposedly that was a real thing! ha) or even just the Portuguese sausage or asian Spam sold elsewhere…..

Nope. Not a single fun Spam can to be had. Highly disappointing.

So… that was our last stop of any importance! We left there around 1:30pm and got back home around midnight.

The cats were very happy to see us. We had a house-sitter that watched them and gathered chicken eggs and kept them watered.. but they were still very happy we were home.

We had originally planned to have an extra 5 days on this trip, but had to cut it short when I learned Norah had 4-H project turn in on Wednesday this week and not Saturday. Oops.

So I had to cut off all of the Iowa and Illinois stops. We are still hoping to go back to Mason, Iowa and do the last 4-5 days sometime soon, but Norah starts school Aug 9th again, we have a fall break trip to New York City booked for October. We are going to Florida for a week in November, looking like Spain for Spring Break or Christmas Break – still up in the air. Lots of fun travel on the horizon. We’ll figure out some time to get it done!

Thanks for following along our adventures! I love that people tell me they enjoy reading this. It’s such a good record of everything we do and see for our family to look back on, but I love seeing anyone else enjoy it, too!

Until next trip!

Today we had to leave for the airport early – by 6:30am! (We are not early risers by nature, if you can’t tell! ha) It was a quick easy drive to a small airport. 7 gates. ha Before we even got to Starbucks from the airport, my mother was already at her gate.

Norah couldn’t hack it that early. haha

We got our coffee and headed out East towards Badlands National Park. But about 50 miles before a town called Wall, these signs start popping up in all directions. In fact, we saw the first one a couple days ago along the road in Wyoming. Wall drug- famous for their FREE ice water and 5 cent coffee. They have been advertising on the roadways since 1931 when they opened in the middle of the great depression. The owner dug a well that gave ice cold water… and road weary travelers started dropping in for refreshment. The business grew into a must stop destination for the town of 800 residents…with over 2 million people stopping in a year for their free ice water 🙂

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It’s just a bunch of small knick-knack stores with a drug store on one end and a cafe. A few quirky carved out characters to get your photo with. But…if you go all the way through to the backyard, you’ll find some fun. And your free ice water you were promised 🙂

So, after a fun little stop there, we headed into the Badlands. Thusly named by early Native Americans here because of its lack of water and hard to navigate terrain. It was bad land.

The Badlands is basically just a drive through about 20 miles of this scenery. There are a couple spots where you can walk out onto the rocks. A couple other short trails out in between some rock… but mostly just viewpoints and Prairie dog towns for viewing the landscape.

We were driving the Badlands “backwards” coming in from the West, so we visited the visitor’s center last so we could learn more about the area and get Norah’s National Park Passport Book stamped. It’s a really cute book for kids (or adults really!) to document when you visited, what you saw, what you liked best, wildlife you saw, etc… and each park has a stamp available at the visitor center for you to get your book stamped, like a passport stamp. Norah really liked collecting the stamps. Hoping we can add to it over the years and she’ll have a great memory book of trips to various National Parks. Doubt we’ll hit them all- there are 63 parks, some in remote Alaska or the Channel Islands or American Samoa.. haha but never say never!

After our exit from the park, while trying to walk out into prairie dog towns and see one up close, we find this private farm with a giant prairie dog statue out front where you can actually feed them, because they are like pets- not protected in the national park. It was busy, so we didn’t stop. Norah still hasn’t forgiven us. ha

Our last couple stops in this area were at the Minute man Missile National Historic Site Visitor Center and then on out to the Delta-9 Missile Silo launch site.

This visitor center is set up to memorialize our Cold War defense system- the Minuteman II Missiles that were buried underground in this area as our national defense system against Russian nuclear attack.

These Minuteman II missiles had 80 times the payload of the bombs we dropped on Japan. Imagine the impact-1-2 million people dead with each blast and we had hundreds of these ready to go. Russian had more than we did! Imagine a launch across the Eastern seaboard. 150 million dead or so? Scary, scary stuff.

After taking in the exhibits at the visitor center, we drove the 15 miles out to the Delta-9 Missile silo

So, after confronting just how close we were to killing ourselves off for about 30 years there… we drove on towards Minnesota. Along the way we passed a billboard saying “Feed Otis Popcorn” – and Otis was a camel. Well, Norah saw it… and she REALLY wanted to feed Otis popcorn. haha Good marketing, folks. So… that’s how we came to stop in at 1880 town along the interstate.

Kegan and I were not overly thrilled to be going here, but we didnt have a ton planned- they had bathrooms and Norah seemed to be genuinely excited about feeding a camel. ha Even less excited to learn they charge almost $20 a person for the pleasure of visiting their town! But… all in all, we were really glad we stopped! They had some really neat items and a huge collection of antiques I hadnt seen before…. so I changed my tune. Now, I say it’s definitely worth a stop!

We finally got back around to Otis…but he was just inside a fence, chilling… no one around and no popcorn to be seen. And he wasn’t interested in us. ha So…Norah did not get to feed a camel popcorn, but she saw him and she seemed happy enough.

Walking back to where Otis was, we saw Longhorn cattle up close. Closest we had ever been. Those horns are MASSIVE.

We got back on the interstate and headed East again, passed this guy walking his pet dinosaur along the road.

That brought us to the Dignity statue at a rest area overlooking the Missouri river- at the location where Lewis and Clark crossed out into the territory on their expedition.

This spot along I-90 near Chamberlain, South Dakota was also the spot where Lewis and Clarke set up camp before crossing the Missouri River into uncharted territory with the Corp of Discovery in 1803. It makes sense- the entire eastern side of the hillside slowly slopes down to the river like one giant boat ramp.. so I can see how this seemed to be a good spot.

There was a large gallery of items explaining some of the crew and goods the exhibition used…there was even a 55 foot keelboat like the 3 the group used for supplies… but of course looking at my camera role, the only photo I took was of the stuffed prairie dogs that they discovered! haha

We trucked on across South Dakota, eventually arriving at the famed Corn palace in Mitchell, SD.

Every year, the town of Mitchell creates all new murals out of corn cobs for display. They have been doing this for over 100 years, attracting visitors to their town. It’s the world’s ONLY corn palace. ha

Last stop of interest today along the road was the Porter sculpture park near Montrose. I thought it looked interesting, but after visiting and talking to the strange man who designed all of this- I now call it a must stop.

He said he works on the sculptures during the winters and then mans the booth and runs the RV campground in the summers. He said it sure beats sheep herding. ha

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All in all, a great little walking path with tons of poems to accompany his many sculptures. We enjoyed seeing them as well as our conversations with the artist himself.

Dinner was just a roadside BBQ joint right up the road from our hotel. Unassuming and we didn’t have high hopes- but they had OUT OF THIS WORLD smoked chicken wings. Couldn’t recommend them more!

One more post for the last two days coming up – Minneapolis to home- coming soon! 🙂

Our first order of business today was a two hour drive away from Rapid City to hit Devil’s tower National Monument and then backtrack through towns such as Spearfish, Sturgis and Deadwood.

Native American Legend of the Kiowa and Lakota tribes of the area say that one day a group of girls were playing when their brother turned into a giant bear and chased them. The girls climbed onto a big rock and fell to their knees, praying for the great spirit to save them. The Great Spirit heard them and made the giant rock rise up so that the giant bear could not climb the sides. The deep ridges in the side are the bear’s claws from trying to climb the steep sides. The rock continued to grow until it reached the heavens and the girls all became the stars in the Pleiades constellation (also known as the 7 sisters.)

Also, inside the park, we saw our first prairie dog town. They were adorable little things. So playful. One popped out of a hole with his arms straight up in the air and yelled “MEEP!” and we were sad we didn’t get that on video. ha

We exited the park…and boy were we glad we got there when we did. We had no trouble parking at Devil’s Tower or stopping along the road for prairie dog watching, but when we left, there was a line a mile long waiting to get into the park. We were thankful we were slightly earlier birds than the rest of the folks today!

Our next site was the Aladdin Coal Tipple. A coal tipple is a device used to sort different sized coal chunks into railroad cars. This is one of the last standing structures of its kind in the American West…and as you can see, it’s falling down and has been re-supported to preserve it a bit longer.

We drove on to Belle Fourche. The geographic center of the United States!… except its not. ha If you read the sign out front of the visitor center it actually says that the point is 20 miles away. ha BUT… the monument is here, so we went and photographed it. 🙂

This brought us driving through Sturgis- luckily the giant bike rally that brings in almost a million people doesn’t happen for 2-3 more weeks. It’s in August. I can’t imagine what a congested mess everything will be adding 800,000+ bikes to this summer traffic in this area. ha No thanks!

Traffic hasn’t affected us much, to be honest. Parking lots are full, but we are able to find a spot of someone leaving almost every time… hotels are full, but no issues with our rooms being available or parking in the hotel lots. Restaurants are full, but reservations have been our saving grace. Only a couple nights when we didn’t plan ahead have we ended up with Wendys 🙂 Ordering ahead for pickup through apps online has been a game changer, as well.

Driving back towards Rapid City brought us just outside of Deadwood, South Dakota. Which, if you’ve ever had HBO, I hope you’ve watched the series Deadwood. It’s such a good old western series. With a ton of cursing. ha If that isn’t your thing- please ignore my advice to watch it. ha

Our first stop was at the Tatanka-Story of Bison visitor center. This site has a unique history. Kevin Costner built it. Apparently, he loves the Black Hills. He wanted to make a movie about the people and the west of this area. Couldn’t hardly get funding. That movie he made and directed – Dances With Wolves – went on to win multiple awards and over 400 million at the box office. Smash hit. and even though it was made in 1990, I bet almost everyone reading this watched that movie at least once. It was iconic. Fast forward a few years and Kevin Costner has another big plan- he wants to create a huge hotel outside of Deadwood with a train that will run in to it and bring tons of tourists… he sees this as a destination spot for city folks. But no investors are seeing his vision. After years, he was unable to get anyone to see his vision… but it sounded like (from a video at the center) that the hillside he envisioned for the project had already been cut down and leveled…and he felt like instead of ruining the land and leaving it for someone else or making it easy for a another cheap chain business to plop something down there and tarnish the area, he decided to create a visitor center to tell the story of Lakota people and their relationship with bison historically and give a place to showcase these giant bronze bison statues that he had commissioned for an art installation around his hotel.

He said it was something you do to make things right. You don’t cover up your mess or pass it on for your children to deal with. So I get the feeling this small museum was his way of paying back for the damage to the land with nothing to show for it.

We watched a 20 minute video about it, then a person of Lakota heritage showed us around the items in the small museum section, then we proceeded out back to see the sculptures placed here.

Once we left there, we headed into Deadwood proper.

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Deadwood quickly developed overnight when gold was discovered in the Black Hills. A river running right through the area was loaded with gold and a ton of dead trees- hence “Deadwood”. It sprang up overnight, literally, with outlaws, gambling, prostitution and all the other good things that go along with men making money for the first time in their lives.

One of these men in the town was Wild Bill Hickok- a famous wild west character of his time, famous for gunfights, sheriff duels, and other probably exaggerated and made up stories that the eastern city folks just LOVED to eat up in the dime novels and newspaper articles. He had only been in town a couple weeks when he was shot by Jack McCall, a day after Wild Bill beat him at poker and then gave him a bit of his money back and told him to go get something to eat. That apparently was condescending and the next day, Jack McCall returned to the saloon and shot Wild Bill in the back of the head and tried to flee town. Wild Bill died instantly, holding 2 black Aces and 2 black 8s- forever known as “the dead man’s hand”.

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After walking all of Deadwood up and down both sides of main street, we headed back to Rapid City. We finished earlier than I had planned in Deadwood because I had been looking forward to a Stagecoach ride through the streets that you could purchase. I had the location written down and the times that the coach ran. I thought it would be a totally cool experience to see how people would have ridden around before cars. I found the booth and the lady said they that they weren’t running the Stagecoach this season, too many people, too crowded. Never heard of a business that cancelled a money-making service because it was too popular. ha So that was disappointing.

It thunder stormed pretty heavily for a couple hours on our way to town and so we just went to the hotel for an hour or so until it quit, then we headed downtown.

Downtown Rapid City they have a “walk of presidents” with bronze sculptures of each president through Barrack Obama. No Donald Trump statue yet that we could find. I figure that’s better anyway right now as polarizing as that still is. We did see a mini van making laps up and down the main drag with a “F*** Biden and F** You for Voting for Him” giant flag yelling at people. His 15 year old minivan really gave me the vibe he was knocking life out of the park. *sarcasm*

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Rapid City has a piece of the Berlin wall and a tank trap from the area of Checkpoint Charlie which we visited a couple years ago!

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Downtown amongst all the restaurants and buildings is a narrow alley dubbed Art alley full of grafitti artwork.

Once we finished our president’s walk and exploring, we went to our reservations at Talley’s Silver Spoon, an old diner that it now run by a very good chef turning out some excellent food.

Tomorrow morning, we drop her at the airport way too early in the morning and head to the Badlands for the last couple days of our trip!