Finally a day where everything is going right,

Day 4 

I'm up a little early, well, earlier than I wanted to be. But I need to go through yesterdays blog,

to correct and

add  all the details that I've missed,  or just remembered with a fresh mind. Time for a shower and a

little TV before the breakfast buffet starts at 6 am. I'll not bore you with pics of the underwhelming

selection, but I made my coffee, and have a couple of yogurt cups, then I'm good to go.


Time to load up the bike, as the sun is starting to rise. I Check the oil and add some air to the tires.

There's a saying, take care of the bike, and it will take care of you, I actually spent a lot of time

getting the bike ready for this trip.



I'm checked out, and and on the road at 7:30 am. It's a little later than I wanted to, but it is what it is.

I'm not a morning person, and it seems like it takes me hours to get on the road. But it's a bright

sunny

morning and 60 degrees out. So I go with the same combo from yesterday. Today's first stop is "The

Corn Palace". Which is around 1 hour away. It was a pretty uneventful drive. The only interesting

part is that the speed limit is 80 mph/ 130 kph.  The bike handled that with no problem. The only

thing is that since this is the corn belt, all the gas has ethanol in it, like 10%. So my mileage goes

noticeably down. You can actually tell when your running on it, or your on regular gasoline.




The Corn Palace is about 10 minutes off the Interstate.

So all the art and lettering is done with different corn husks. Every year they have a different theme.

I think you can figure out this years theme. They have pictures of every years theme going back to

forever.

                                                             It's just a fancy arena.

                                                              Gift shop across the street.

                                 This was actually the most interesting thing about the stop.

  

                                            I have a couple of friends that could use this.



The part I don't get is all the people who come and see this. There were actually bus loads of people

stopping by. This one gets a hard pass, don't waste your time.



The next stop is actually a stop for gas, cruising at 80 mph and passing at 90 mph really kills the

gas tank. That and the ethanol. So just a quick fill up and back on the road. I was starting to get a

little

behind where I wanted to be, for what time it was, and there popped up the "Your now on Mountain

time. Yea, another 25 hour day. I didn't check to see where it was on the map, so it was a nice

surprise. I did pass

a sign for "Laura Ingalls Wilder's house" Otherwise known as "Little house on the Prairie". I could

have, but I wasn't really into the series. But considering where it is, I think winter was way nastier

then they made it out to be on the TV series.


2 hours later I hit my second stop of the day. 1880's town. I didn't know much about it, but I'm on

vacation, so I made the stop. 

                                           This stone was really cool and rather large

                                                  Not much to look at from the outside.

                              But when you get inside, this guy has collected a lot of stuff.

                            That's either Saturday or Sunday I'll finally be seeing it live.

He also bought a lot of the "Dancing with Wolf's" props. I didn't see the movie, but it looks real

enough for me.

Here's Main Street. This was created for a movie. Here's a link for the history

1880's Town history

                                           There's a video of the history of the plains.

                                                              Who put the Loonie there?

              The coolest building in 1880's town, I wonder what happens in those rooms upstairs?

This place was worth the stop, I spent around a hour there. It costs $12 to get in and was worth it!!!!


The next stop is about a hour down the road, funny how they all seem to be a hour away. As soon as

get on the bike the gps goes off warning me about rain in the area. It's had that feature, but never

really worked until this trip. It downloads weather maps and puts them on the gps. It's another day

where I forgot to check the weather forecast at my destination, not where I started riding from. Well I

almost make it to my next stop before the clouds open up (but not too much).

This stop I've been looking forward to. It's just off the Interstate and to my surprise, busy.  Being that

I grew up during the cold war, these missiles are one of the things that kept me safe.

The funny thing is, nothing is actually here. As you can see by the maps, everything is spread out,

go figure. To my big disappointment, tours of the command site were booked up for the day.

However a missile silo was open to the public 10 miles down the road. Just in case you were

wondering, we really are out in the middle of nowhere.

            The map gives you a idea on how spread out everything is (over hundreds of miles)

                                                   That re bar is as thick as my wrist

This display gives you all the steps needed to launch  a missile and how long it takes to get there.

Unlike in the movies, you can't recall or self destruct the missiles. once they are launched .

                                                There's plenty of nothing out here!


So off I go, the rain has stopped, but the clouds say not so fast. It's a 15 minute drive down to the silo.


There's not much to see as you pull up, which I get was the idea when they built them.

                                                      All the info you need to know

                                                Access doors to service the missile.

         The rails and lid that would get blasted/pushed on the rails when the missile was launched.

                                                   This is where the crew would get in

                                              The coolest pic by far, it's really impressive.

 
                                                  More info on what everything is.

                             Here's some scale on the silo's lid. I'd say it's at least 4 feet thick.

                                                       More hatches I'd like to go into

The interstate is just were you see the antenna in the middle of the picture. I'm actually surprised on

how close it is to the interstate. 

                                                          Buffalo or cattle, you decide

I didn't see that sign until I was leaving, so I guess I'm in Rattlesnake country now.  Of course it starts

to rain,  you know the kind where they are big fat rain drops.  So I hurriedly get my gear on and back

onto the Interstate. The funny thing is that I'll get less wet riding the bike on the interstate than I will

standing out in a field waiting for the storm to pass. I give BMW credit for the design of the bike to

keep the rider mostly dry while riding in the rain. That, plus my upgraded windshield. The other

reason is that Wall Drug is just 10 minutes down the road, and would make a great place to wait out

the storm. Or that's what I thought. By the time I got there it was really coming down. So I find a

parking spot and get out of the rain. The good thing about Wall Drug is that they have those covered

walkways so you can keep dry and walk between stores.

                                                 It looks cool, but there really nothing there.

                                                         The only t-shirt that I liked

                                                     Finally a raccoon that I like.

                                                            Native American blankets

                                                                  Made in India

                 I was thinking of getting the wife beater, google it if you don't know what it means.

It's not what I thought it would be. I was under the impression that it was on a Main Street, in some

little town. Since the weather app said the storms would pass in 1/2 hour I decided to wait it out and

get something to eat. $5 for onion rings that I could cook up my self . This place is a tourist trap and

for me, in the worst kind of way. I don't need 4 T shirts for $10, that will shrink the first time I wash

them. Anyway, another hard pass from Alby, save your money.  Don't be fooled by all those signs

that you will see for 100's of miles away.


It's 2 pm and the rain has stopped, so back on the road and I'm only a 1/2 hour from my next stop,

The South Dakota Air and Space Museum..

                                   This pic isn't mine, I downloaded it from a gov't site.

There's nothing better than watching a B-1 bomber taking off, as your getting ready to enter the

museum.

                                   Glad they got out of the balloon before it hit the ground

                                     Pre GPS days, what did we do without them? Got lost a lot.

                                   I'll think I'll have a career in bomb disposal, said no one.

 MRE's or meals ready to eat. Now that's eating. When some of my fellow scooterist were in the 

      reserves, they'd bring them to scooter runs,

                            They had a dam burst down the road and how the air base help out.

                                                                 A Titan 2 engine

                                                             The cold war section

                                            Missiles, Missiles,  Missiles, we've got lots.

A training simulator for the minuteman missile system. They take you through all the steps needed to

launch the missiles.

 It's a great little museum and and it's free with donations accepted (which I did).  It's 4 pm and time

to book my hotel for the next couple of days. It's a toss between Rapid City, SD and Sturgis, SD.

Either will work for me doing all the Black Hill attractions (Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse. etc).

Sturgis won on price, so that's where I'm staying.  A half a hour later and I'm there and my motel is

right by the entrance into town.

I hit up a Taco place for a lite bite to eat, a couple of taco's and a drink. Then I head into town to see

if anything is happening. What I was afraid of happened. I got there after 5 pm and half the town was

already shut down.

                                 There's a street motocross event happening here this weekend

 Some of the shops were still open, and they do have a great and non pc selection of t-shirts.

I head back to my motel room, stopping off at the grocery store to pick up dinner and sit down and

update the  blog...



Today mileage  405 miles or 651 km

Total for trip  1424 miles or 2291 km