We left Chicago early in the morning, around 7:30am to allow plenty of time from driving through the rough traffic. Ensuring that Erby was behind us was the tough part. If he got lost in the sea of cars, it might have taken a long time before we could meet up again. Breaking through the traffic and through the toll roads of the Chicago metro finally revealed the Wisconsin border with beautiful green rolling hills and picturesque skies, like in the photo above. We were truly in the American Midwest now.

Our first stop was in Janesville, WI for a look at the giant cow.

Then we hit the road again towards Wisconsin Dells after a quick stop off at the Mouse House Cheese House.

Wisconsin Dells was an interesting place. I don’t know much of the history so I’m going to blindly speculate that the happy motoring culture of the 50s created this place. Much like Cave City, KY. The tackiest water slides and themed buildings I’ve ever seen, the whole place was kitch city. Probably because the nearby river couldn’t meet capacity, the nearby hotels built water parks to encourage people to continue to vacation in the area. Among the odd sights of the Dells was this Amish family going to Burger King.

We then drove through many more miles of rolling farmland until we crossed the Mississippi River and into the craggy mountain edge on the border of Minnesota. We were quite hungry at this point and stopped off in the small town of St. Charles where a local said, “North Carolina! That’s a long way from here…” The diner was full of Amish and locals, the menu had a “pop” section. This was a different world.

The only thing in south Minnesota other than farmland was a massive 60′ statue of the Jolly Green Giant.

We soon started to see our first indications that Wall Drug awaited us in West South Dakota. The road signs passed us by on I-90 every so often. Eventually we made it across the border into SD, found the cute little midwestern town of Sioux Falls and grabbed a bite to eat with our awesome CouchSurfing host who had biked from Seattle to Banff one summer! Wow! Our dinner was at a local restaurant that had a jazz band inside. My buffalo burger was delicious. Our host had to go to work at 5am the next morning for the local Sherrif’s department so he left us the keys and we went to sleep after talking a little more about Sioux Falls. I imagined that few ever passed through Sioux Falls but he said that he was going to be triple booked the upcoming weekend with travelers from Germany, California and Canada. Apparently Sioux Falls was a popular stop for people coming to and from the Badlands!

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