Travel-U.S., Cross Country: Day 5

So I know I have been posting mostly about our Asian travels, but I always love to swing back to some travels in the U.S.  After this post (and this post) detailing my husband and I’s first day of our cross-country trip, I thought I would share another interesting day during our 22 day adventure across America.  So here it is – Cross Country Trip DAY 5.

Today I woke up in an igloo and by the end of the day I was watching the sunset over the bones of a dinosaur…it was an interesting day, to say the least.  So I will start with explaining our sleeping arrangements the night before…during our many hours of research and planning for this cross-country trip, one thing we wanted to do was stay in a “unique” hotel, something different, completely unusual.  Now, you may not know this, but there are MANY “unique” hotels across the U.S. (more on this later), but this was by far one of the craziest and inventive we found AND it was on our route!  It’s called Don Q Inn and it’s very unique.  Let’s just say that they have “Fantasy Suites” and we chose the suite called “Northern Lights”.

Okay, so maybe our evening was a bit strange, but hey, when am I ever going to sleep on a water bed in an igloo again?  Ha!  After leaving Dodgeville, Wisconsin, we began our trip, along the way seeing some interesting sights.  Our end point for today – Rapid City, South Dakota.

Soon we crossed the mighty Old Mississippi River.  Mississippi we learned is Algonquin for “father of waters”…boy, this River was amazing to see!  It’s so beautiful and huge!

We passed so many sights and of course stopped at our Road Side America attractions…we saw the largest corn on the cob, the Jolly Green Giant, the SPAM Museum and we even passed a town with a population of 395 people!

For lunch, we pulled off an exit and drove up to the nearest sign that said food, so we could grab something quick before jumping back on the road.  We had a long drive ahead of us.  When we walked in, little did we know, we were walking into one of the oldest restaurants in the processed pork capital of the world – Austin, Minnesota – named Tendermaid.  This was located just down the road from where the Spam plant is located.  The restaurant, well it was more like a cute, cozy dive with bar stools surrounding the cooking area which produced the most unusual type of burger I have eaten.  This place was opened 72 years ago with the notion that burgers can be served loosely and not in a patty form!  The burger meat was chopped up and put into a steamer that burned all the fat off and made it the healthiest way to eat a burger!!!  Of course my husband and I were sold the moment we heard the word “burger”, but their hospitality, kindness and great food kept us intrigued for the duration of our stay.  My husband choose to have his burger the “western way” which was served with BBQ sauce, onions, bacon and pickles.  I went the more “original” way and enjoyed mine with mustard, ketchup, onions and pickles.  But the best part by far was the bun…it was a Wonder Bread hamburger roll!!  My favorite!  We were told that for years people had been offering the restaurant different selections of buns to try, but they kept going back to Wonder Bread.   No other bun held up so well and kept the meal tasting as good!  Sara, the owner of Tendermaid, couldn’t have been any nicer or more hospitable.  After eating our burgers, I washed mine down with a banana milkshake, which was the best dessert by far!  As we said our goodbyes and finished lunch, we realized meeting people like Sara and stopping at places like Tendermaid is what made the long, exhausting drives of our trip so worthwhile and memorable.

After lunch we were back on the maddening roads of I-90 in Minnesota and South Dakota.  The road is flat and straight for about 500 miles.  It was an exhausting drive.  We continued making small stops to see the weird Americana along the way to break up the drive and to give us a laugh.  One our last stops for the night was the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.  This is truly a unique place – literally one of a kind!  Each year the residents of Mitchelle grow and harvest corn to place on the outside of their town hall building.  It’s meant to “celebrate the “unique and special qualities of corn.”  Check out these pictures.

After leaving Mitchell, we cleared the Great Plains and started to enter into the Badlands.  The change in scenery and geography was evident when we crossed the Missouri River.  As we crossed into Missouri you could see the flat farm land change dramatically to rolling grassy hills – at that time of day it was truly breathtaking.  The song from the movie “Calamity Jane” kept flowing through my mind… “the black hills, the black hills, the black hills of Dakota” so I had to call my mom so we could sing along together.  Another one of my favorite movies growing up.

As we continued our drive, we grew anxious to reach exit 170 before sunset…the sun was beginning to set and we are only at exit 260!  One of our Roadside America scenic stops mentioned an “attraction” to see off the side of the highway.  Supposedly, located near a replica of a 1880s town, right off the major highway, stands a full size skeleton of a man, holding a leash as he takes his pet T-Rex dinosaur skeleton for a walk!  We really wanted to see this – but it looked like we might not have left enough time before sunset!  Our time zones were off and we weren’t sure we planned according.  But with hopes in our hearts and 85 miles per hour under our feet, we pushed forward as we honestly raced against the sunset over the hills ahead of us.

The sun kept trying to creep behind the last rolling hill, but then the next mile came and we would catch it again.  So just as it snuck down below to wink at the world for its last time that evening, there it was, the dinosaur and his friend.  We made it!

After our stress dissipated, we let our foot off the gas a bit and headed towards Rapid City.  Now on to DAY 6.

If you are interested in some more “UNIQUE HOTELS” in the U.S., here’s a list of 10 below (although there are many more:

1.)  Don Q Inn Fantasy Suites – Dodgeville, WI – described above
2.)  Jules Undersea Lodge – Key Largo, Florida
3.)  Dog Bark Park Inn – Cottonwood, ID
4.)  Wigwam Motel – Holbrook, AZ – we also stayed here in during our Cross-Country Trip
5.)  Out ‘n’ About Treehouse Treesort, Takilma, OR
6.)  Northern Rail Traincar Hotel – Two Harbors, MN
7.)  Karrels’ Double K Ranch B&B – Tucson, AZ
8.)  Cedar Creek Treehouse – Ashford, WA
9.)  Turpentine Creek – Eureka Springs, AR
10.)  Kokopelli’s Cave – Farmington, NM  (AND we also stayed here!  It was an amazing experience!!!  Another Travel post to come soon explaining our adventure staying in our very own cave for the night.)