Day 2 - Rockford, Illinois to Mitchell, South Dakota (887 Km)

Another solid day of driving across the heart of America took us through three new states I’ve never visited – Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Today’s drive was a much easier one, and as we traveled further west and away from Chicago, the interstate grew noticeably more and more empty. There was once again plenty of road work, including plenty of stretches through Minnesota where the road was a single lane for miles at a time. Somehow when you’re the only car on the road for miles, having only one pylon-lined lane instead of two doesn’t really slow things down too much.

Traveling Interstate 90 through Illinois and most of Wisconsin looked a lot like driving down the 401 in Ontario – the landscape was pretty much the same.


But as we crossed the Mississippi River into Minnesota, things began to change.


First, there was the gradual climb out of the Mississippi valley, which felt a lot like driving through the Canadian Shield in northern Ontario, as we climbed close to 800 ft. over an hour (side note: our GPS tracking software, which includes altitude, is very cool!). Minnesota was farmland as far as the eye could see, and was pretty flat once we emerged from the Mississippi. This stretch also included the most number of windmills I’ve ever seen, with groups of 5 or 6 dotting the horizons every few miles.


As we crossed into South Dakota, the landscape began to quickly change – interesting given that the border between the two states is really just an imaginary line, not a geographic feature like a river. But within miles, the endless flat cornfields changed to gently rolling grassy fields. Barely two hours into South Dakota, and the landscape really does look like it’s straight our of Dances with Wolves.


We broke up journey today with half hour trip to one of the craziest roadside attractions I’ve ever seen. After seeing countless crazy billboards for hundreds of miles leading up to Austin, Minnesota, we couldn’t resist a visit to the Spam Museum. I’m not kidding.

This official museum, operated by the Hormel Foods company was quite possibly the coolest and saddest thing I have ever seen, all at the same time. And the gift shop! I’ve never seen SPAM printed on so many things – of course we couldn’t resist a couple of T-shirts and a beer cozy.

We wrapped up our day in Mitchell, South Dakota – again lured off the highway after hundreds of miles of billboards, this time boasting the world’s only Corn Palace.

Though the palace itself wasn’t much to see (we weren’t really expecting it to be anything), it’s existence in the middle of an otherwise desolate state has attracted quite a collection of hotels and restaurants right off the interstate. So tonight we find ourselves in a cheap little Best Western motel, which happens to include free wireless internet (hence, the blog update).

Tomorrow it’s on to Mount Rushmore, and then further into Wyoming and possibly even Montana. I’m really looking forward to the mountains – hopefully we’ll be close enough to catch a glimpse before bed tomorrow night…