One very looooong drive

While visiting my sister in AZ, she told me about a recent conversation she had had with a friend of hers. In that conversation the friend told her that the ‘average’ time a visitor spends at a National Park is 15 minutes (which I really have a hard time believing because some people spend a week at a time at National Parks and that would mean many more people actually spend less than 15 minutes when they visit a National Park – which seems a little improbable, not to mention totally pointless). Well, if this little factoid is indeed true, today we didn’t do much to increase that average as we did our one and only ‘drive by’ National Park visit through the Badlands in South Dakota. Much as we would have liked to stop and take a walk or two, we had just under 1,000 miles to knock down on our way to Chicago on the agenda today, so we really didn’t have time for any sight-seeing along the way. So I don’t have a whole lot to say about the Badlands other than that it looked pretty cool. A nice place to get out and do some hiking. We’ll make a note and have to hit it better on our next road trip. The other 2 stops we made along the way to Chicago were Wall Drug in where else, Wall, South Dakota and the Corn Palace in Mitchell (again, another ‘drive-by’ affair). Wall Drug. How could we not stop at this famous shopping mall tourist-attraction… but I rather wish we hadn’t. If I’m being honest with you, it’s a lot tacky and just a little over-priced (except for the 5 cent coffee you can buy which sadly, isn't even worth the 5 cents so please do yourself a favor and no matter how desperate you are - don't buy the 5 cent coffee). That being said, we’ll still proudly display the bumper sticker (one free to each visitor) on our roof box. After leaving the Corn Palace in Mitchell (tough to explain, so just look it up), we drove, and drove, and drove and drove, until, at 2:00 a.m., we reached our next destination – Chicago.