Road Trip! A South Dakota Adventure (Thursday, September 15th, 2016)

We were up early this morning, and met Steve's parents, his brother and our sister-in-law for a little adventure.  We are heading to South Dakota!

Now you might be wondering what South Dakota has to offer, so let me tell you...it has the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and even Sturgis!  But we weren't going to see any of those national treasures.  We had a much more important trip planned. We were on our way to visit the land that Steve's family homesteaded in the late 1800's. 

Steve's mom planned this trip and was sponsoring it for all of us. She wanted her boys to better understand this part of their family heritage, and was gracious enough to include us wives!

So we all piled into the minivan (where there isn't a bad seat...all were very comfortable), and off we went into the great unknown.

Steve's mom just got her coffee at McDonalds, so she is a happy girl!

As we left the Denver area, we encountered a lot of fog out on the eastern plains.  

Sorry if some of the pictures are a little blurry. That's what happens at 65 miles per hour from the third row seat of a minivan.

The landscape throughout our drive varied between different kinds of agriculture.  The land is vast in South Dakota, with views for miles in every direction.

Hay bales in the field

Pasture land

Millet or some other type of grain

Sunflowers zooming by!

As we started to drive through the small farming towns of South Dakota, we noticed that every town (no matter how small) has their own farm equipment dealer.

We stopped for gas in one of the small towns, and as I was standing in line for the ladies room, I noticed these on the shelf of the convenience store.  Very interesting! Another thing we had never seen or tried before....oh what fun!

We stopped for lunch in the small town of Valentine, South Dakota, at a place called Runza.  It appears to be a chain and it appears to serve some sort of fast food, so we decided to give it a try.



Even when we ordered, we didn't realize that their specialty is kraut burgers (which they call runzas).  They are beef, onion and cabbage on a homemade bun.  If I had known this, I would have ordered differently.  I had an Asian chicken salad, which was probably healthier than a kraut burger, but not nearly as fun.  But I did enjoyed trying a bite of Steve's mom's runza.

Steve's dad enjoying his kraut burger.

We drove through the town of Redfield where Steve's mom spent time in her childhood.

Since we're from a bigger city, we never see grain silos in the middle of town, so this was interesting to us.

There are a lot of ethanol plants in the area.  Ethanol is a fuel made from corn that is added to gasoline to cut down on emissions. This gas mixture works fine in modern cars.  One strange thing we found was that most gas stations in South Dakota offer unleaded gas with, and without ethanol.  The gas with ethanol is about $0.35 per gallon cheaper, so we assume that the farm equipment must need the gas without ethanol.....again, just strange to us as we had never seen this before. 

When we arrived in Aberdeen, South Dakota, we checked into our room at the Holiday Inn Express.  Our room was nice, with two queen beds.  Since we are members of the rewards club, we get the best room available when we check in, so we gave that room to Steve's parents, so that they could host the cocktail hour in their room.

Our room with two queen beds

Cocktail hour in Steve's parent's room.  They had a suite, so there was plenty of room for all of us!

Steve's mom knows that I prefer to drink beer out of a glass instead of a bottle or can, so she even brought me my own glass, all the way from Colorado to enjoy my beer in.  She is so sweet!!!

When cocktail hour was over, we all went out for a nice dinner, then Steve and I came back to enjoy a soak in the hot tub. This felt so good after a day of riding! We were amazed at what a nice pool the hotel had, with a slide, two pools and two hot tubs.  We ended up learning that the town uses the pool for birthday parties and other like functions...very cool!

With our long day of traveling behind us, we had two days to explore South Dakota and the farmland that was homesteaded by Steve's family.  

Stay tuned for more of our South Dakota adventure!