Day 2 - drive, drive, and then drive some more

866 miles from Chicago to Wall, South Dakota. Once you head west it's all corn fields and windmills.

Crossing the Mississippi from WI to MN.

The Mississippi, MN on the left, WI on the right.

Self portrait - what happens when Laurie drives and I'm bored.

The entire south part of MN is nothing but farms and windmills. I never thought MN was that windy, however it really was to, see the following picture.

The wind caught this trailer and spun the van righ into the median flipping the trailer. It happened just a few minutes in front of us. Thankfully nobody was hurt, just pretty shook up.

??? anyone want to guess what this is?

Once we hit South Dakota the weather got bad, we drove through 2 really nasty thunderstorms, rain so hard you couldn't see. This was just as the first was clearing up. 

Tomorrow we're off to Badlands National Park, then wednesday is hopefully Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Deadwood, Devils Tower and who knows what.

The big trip - day 1

Sunday, August 29th, 0 miles driven, just finishing packing and loading the car and we'll be off soon. Day 1 is just driving to chicago to stay with Laurie's sister Julie. After hours of making lists of things to pack and stuff to do before we left, we only made it about a mile when I remembered I forgot my phone so we had to go back and start over again.

Tomorrow should be a long day driving, from here to Wall SD. Hopefully there will be more interesting pictures to post.

Just before we left, this is the last time the car will be this clean for a long long time.

Step 1 - pack the trunk as full as humanly possible.

To whom it may concern, we've kidnapped Jackson, if you want him back it will cost you.

Step 2 - pack everything else in the back seat and hope it fits.

Step 3 - spend all day seeing this view, not very exciting.

Since today was not exciting I include an extreme closeup of the turtle I had to fish out of the pool before we closed it on thursday.

Dream Cruise - part 2 - hood ornaments.

These pics need no explination, just things on hoods that look cool.

Dream Cruise - cars

Most dream cruise's have perfect weather, not today. It was an on and off drizzle until the afternoon so we started with the Mustang display on 9mile, an umbrella in one hand and camera in the other. Later in the day the rain finally drifted away and the rest of the cruise was pretty nice.

My favorite of the mustangs, a FT500 KR.

Laurie likes them red with white strips.

One of the new Boss 302's.

Either this truck has huge tires or Laurie shrunk in the rain.

A sweet very early vette.

Another nice old vette.

Fast cars and slow police? (they actually made it through traffic much faster than any cars).

One of many beautiful Cobra replicas.

There were many many late 50's Chevys.

A nice old T-bird, although a little too much pink for my taste.

Yes, the Batmobile.

If the Batmobile can show up, I guess the Monkeymobile can too.

Giant people or really small car?

Niagara Falls - part 3

Just got home from a quick 2 day trip to Niagara Falls to shoot my sister in law's golf tournament. Her team from the US played against a team from Canada.

The American Falls from across the river.

We got there thursday night, checked into the hotel, then of course walked down to the falls to take some pictures.

The lights on the Canadian side that shine on the falls at night.

The walk from the river back to our hotel, the tower just to the right of the casino.

Our hotel, our room was in the left tower about in the middle, facing the falls.

The view from our room, the American Falls are just to the left and below the casino sign, I dreamed about gambling all night, I have no idea why.

The 2nd night we caught the fireworks, we walked down to the river but the mist from the falls soaked us so we walked back to the hotel and watched from our room.

My favorite.

Me waiting to go home.

Niagara Falls - part 2

Sunset as we were driving to the falls, we stopped for the night a couple hours before the falls and found all the hotels were full so we drove till midnight and stayed 100 yards from the falls.

Once we checked in we walked over to the island between the falls, this is the Canadian Falls at midnight.

The Canadian Falls up close.

The American Falls.

The rapids upstream from the American Falls, the tower in the background is on the Canadian side.

The Canadian side looking from the American side.

The Canadian Falls up really close.

The Maid of the Mist.

The American Falls up really close.