goodbye humidity

Apparently all I have to do is give up on getting the pictures to work and then, all the sudden, magic happens.

The second day of our trip started with crossing the Mississippi River. It was huge and beautiful!

 Welcome to Minnesota! Unfortunately, central and western Minnesota was not much to look out. A lot of flat and a lot of farms....

Our next stop was the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. We had no idea what to expect but it was something to see and admission was free. It made for a good excuse to get out of the truck!

It is an entire building decorated in corn. They change the design every year and have been doing it for over 100 years; they even have a committee that entertains suggestions if you have any sweet ideas. The inside has pictures of all the previous years and even part of the inside is covered in corn.

The actual facility apparently houses everything from Dakota Wesleyan's basketball games to concerts and school proms. Probably one of the most unique venues I've ever seen!

 After that, we crossed the Missouri River...

 Luckily, we didn't see any...

 From there we continued onto Murdo, SD and there happened to be a museum right by our hotel so we checked it out. Can we say creepy?? It was called the Pioneer Auto Show but it had a little bit, scratch that, a lot of everything. The whole thing was like 40 buildings all filled with different things. They had cars, a whole gemstone and rock collection, tons of collectibles, and some old buildings that use to stand in Murdo. I'm sure if we would have let him, the guy who worked out of the museum would have followed us around and told us about every single thing we looked at.

It was late when we got there so we made a quick trip of it but it was an amazing collection or set of collections...

This car was outside the museum...

 The General Lee (the only one that wasn't crashed)...

 A car made entirely of wood....

 One of the rooms of stuff..

 Couldn't pass up the opportunity...

 Elvis' motorcycle...

 This picture doesn't do justice that was the creepiness of this room but trust us, it was creepy...

 The rooms/buildings were all over this property, most of the stuff was barely even protected from the elements...

 An old service station...

 The dentist room...

 Complete with sets of teeth...

 Then we went to The Diner (that was the name) that was attached to the museum and gift shop. The guy in a shirt and tie was clearly out of place and someone even commented and asked where he was from and what he was doing in town.

Murdo was definitely an experience and, although I don't need to go back, I'm glad we went!

technical difficulties...

Unfortunately most of our pictures are on Mikel's phone which is not cooperating right now. The phone is fine but getting the pictures off the phone is presenting a challenge momentarily.

Either way, our trip has been going well. We went from Onalaska/La Crosse, WI to Murdo, SD and then Murdo, SD to Buffalo, WY. Tomorrow we should be in Dillon in the early afternoon.

We have had relatively good weather except for the wind yesterday that caused us to get 6 miles a gallon of diesel (awesome). Here's some of the highlights from my phone. More details and pictures to come!

Wall Drugs...

 Mount Rushmore!

 A mountain goat at Mount Rushmore!

on the road again...

We hit the road Monday morning at 6:30am. Bring and early! We had to drop off our keys at the rental office and Mikel parked so far away (so that we didn't get stuck in the parking lot) that I got some morning exercise in jogging over and turning in the keys. I can't believe it's all over so fast but can't wait to get to our new house and start exploring a new place.

Just when Mikel thought he left Sears and all things lawn/power equipment behind him, we saw a whole train load full of tractors...

 We drove a lot closer to Chicago and Chicago traffic than Mikel was hoping but Rita (the GPS) told us to so we made it happen. It gave us time to reminisce about our fun trip there with my parents and how I had us set to go to the wrong Chicago airport when we were trying to pick them up. Who puts two major airports in one city anyways! However, I am pretty sure I'm the one who noticed that there may be a chance that we were going to the wrong one so at least I redeemed myself...

 The White Sox's stadium...

 I had to take a picture of this... Choice for healthy eating?! If that's true we're in trouble!

 I looked up this hotel before we left and I'm glad we did. It was a sweet place to stay!

 Cool pool (and we utilized the HUGE whirlpool to relax a little)...

 Indoor/outdoor pool...

 Outside

 Me and Shload making the "moose" sign. Don't zoom in too close on my face on thins one, trust me...

 A family picture by our truck (me and Shload)...

 A view of the outdoor part of the pool from our room....

A good restful night and we're off again in the morning!

we have a lot of stuff

But Goodwill must appreciate us because we definitely went through our stuff and made yet another donation before loading up the truck.

My mom was out for our last week/weekend in Michigan and she was a HUGE help packing and loading the truck (trust me, just ask her and she'll tell you how good of a worker she is). It was great to see her in Michigan one last time and it was definitely a life saver to have her there to help us. 

We picked up the truck Saturday afternoon and loaded it all Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday...

 We were actually done loading most everything into the truck by Sunday about 3:45 and then we loaded the car onto the trailer and started on cleaning the apartment. I shouldn't really say started because my mom had helped with that too but we had a lot of cleaning to do in order to turn the place over to our summer subleasers.

 Considering the entire kitchen was packed up and our car was loaded full of stuff and on the trailer already, we ordered pizza in for dinner and ate it on the living room floor...

 This was all that was left this morning...

One box to put the bedding in and a bag for our clothes...

 Empty rooms...

We put that in the car this morning and started driving!

We've had a great time in Michigan and there's more stuff we were planning on seeing and doing with our last year in East Lansing but we are definitely glad to be headed to Montana and taking on the next new adventure!

packing

So many boxes, so much STUFF!

We will be picking up the truck tomorrow so we can finally put all these boxes somewhere...

I can't believe it's almost here and finally time to move. It looks like we have a place in Dillon and subleasers for this summer so we're making progress. Now, the road ahead...