Black Hills: days 1-2

We left about 4pm Friday afternoon and headed west on the Ohio Turnpike. There’s not much to see between Toledo and Chicago; we hit Chicago about twilight and had a merry chase through the approximately 250 toll booths on I-80, I-94, and I-294. Eventually, we made it to Beloit, Wisconsin, our stop for the night. Dad and Tim took an alternate route thanks to Dad’s bike-mounted GPS, so they arrived about an hour behind– the boys and I were sound asleep by then.
Saturday morning, we had a quick hotel breakfast and hit the road again. Wisconsin turned out to be much prettier than I’d expected. The drive up towards LaCrosse has some pretty nice rock outcroppings and some lovely views over the hills; we stopped in LaCrosse for lunch and saw a really cool statue of two Indians playing LaCrosse. For lunch, we ate at Perkins’, right next to the Black River. Not long after, we crossed the Mississippi, where the scenery really got pretty (and, incidentally, we entered Minnesota). Once we left the river country, things flattened out and got a lot less attractive, unless you like corn.
Along our route, we made two stops: the Spam Museum (which deserves its own blog entry, later today) and the statue of the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, MN. That was pretty cool– a 60′ tall statue of the big green guy. Plus, there was a Dairy Queen next door, which is always a bonus.
Another two hours on the road and we hit Worthington, Minnesota, our Saturday night stop. Pizza Hut provided dinner, and we swam and went to bed– now it’s breakfast time and we’re getting ready to hit the road again today. So far, we’ve come about 800 miles!