Day 4!

Kansas City, MO to Rapid City, SD.

It was more exciting than day 3 for sure. We saw lots of wildlife all throughout the day, so that always puts Kevin in a good mood.

We left Kansas City about 8:30 this morning and headed north up I-29. The drive through the rest of Missouri and Iowa was not very thrilling, but it was interesting to see what it is like to live on the farm. By farm I mean, H-U-G-E plots of land that require multiple people to keep it up and running. The apparatus they use to irrigate the land was interesting too. Sorry no pics of that. Once we made it to Sioux Falls and turned west on I-90 we thought it might get a little more exciting but it didn't. It looked about the same as Iowa for many, many, many miles. The most exciting part of getting on to I-90, other than seeing a few deer and flocks of turkey, was seeing the billboard for the Cabela's store in Mitchell, SD.

Once we made it to Mitchell, we of course took the exit and visited (for the first time ever) the Cabela's store. After being club members and spending LOTS of money there for the last 8 years we finally got to see it for ourselves. While in the store we did get to see a stuffed gray Wolf so I have included a picture of it just for my good friend John David. Hopefully I will get a picture of a real life one sometime and post it.

After going to Cabela's we headed over to the Corn Palace. This place was really cool. The whole outside of the building is "redone" every year using all natural items, mostly consisting of. . . you guessed it, CORN. It dates back all the way to the late 1800's.

This whole side trip put us almost 2 hours behind our projected arrival time in Rapid City, but it was worth it. Unfortunately, it didn't leave us any time to take a side trip to explore the Badlands, I guess that means we will have to check it out the next time we make this trip heading south. We did get a surprise when we showed up at the hotel and realized we were on Mountain Time, so we have gained another hour. Putting us 2 hours behind eastern time.

Now back to all the wildlife, we unfortunately did not get any good pictures of all that we saw, but here is a list: red tail hawks, white tail deer, mule deer, turkeys, a coyote, pheasants, squirrel, sheep, antelope, bison, lots of geese (that were flying north), several horse and countless cows. The antelope that we saw was a real treat. We saw a couple of different herds of them and they were all fairly close to the highway.

All in all it was a pretty good day, but we are very tired after being in the truck all day. Please continue to pray for safe travels, an easy border crossing and that the truck will stay in good working order. Thanks for all your prayers so far.