July 27

This morning we are staying just outside of Iowa City, Iowa. It really doesn't seem possible but sometime in the next 24 hours I'll be logging on to report that the road trip has come to an end and we are back in Fort Wayne. The days have flown by in many ways and it really doesn't seem like over a month from the time we left to head north. Oh well, this is not the time for reflection yet, that might come later.

As you might guess there are no pictures from our travels yesterday. When you have to put over 700 miles between your stops at night you basically don't make time for much more than the necessities. That is not to say that there weren't things that were picture worthy. South Dakota is a mixed bag of things. The western part of the state has the Black Hills and it really was kind of weird to see all the signs for Mount Rushmore and other sites but not stop, but we have seen those before and this was not the trip for the easier to reach sites anyway. Moving east from the Black Hills one gets into country that goes on and on without a farm house or town in site. One of the things I noticed was that in country like this every town that did come along had some kind of hook that they used to try to get you to stop. One place it was props from the movie "Dances with Wolves" another it was the petrified garden (Really, I'm not kidding go ahead and check out the link if you don't believe me.) and finally of course you have the Corn Palace at Mitchell, SD complete with its own web cam.
The eastern part of the state of South Dakota is farm country and a lot of it followed by Iowa which to the travelling eye looks like one big farm. But I know that isn't true as I lived in Iowa for four years growing up. As we travelled through on I-80 and got close to Des Moines the names of all the towns became familiar. They were towns that we used to play in sports and I was able to remember many very good times during junior high and my freshmen year in high school.
From here it is across Illinois and through Chicago into Indiana and home.
The road trip will be over but the journey will go on.