Summer 14 Roadtrip: Days 1-2

Day 1: Drive from Home to Sioux Falls, South Dakota with lunch at Wall Drug Store

We left home at 4:30 am and drove all day in what we slept in. We stopped for some breakfast and gas in Hardin, MT around 7:30 then drove through South Dakota to Wall Drug for lunch around 1pm. The kids had a blast at Wall Drug!

Here's daddy ordering lunch at the Wall Drug cafeteria.

YUM!

Made sure to get our free ice water!

Niles, Heidi, Addie, Ammon, and James at Wall's "Backyard"

Heidi on a Jackalope

Addie and Niles on a Jackalope

James, Heidi, and Niles with the Wall Drug T-Rex

James, Addie, and Heidi at the shooting gallery

Cutie Ad

Niles and me hamming it up at the shooting gallery

Wall Drug had a fun toy store and arcade where the kids got their wiggles out, and we headed back on the road after about 90 minutes. It was a scorching hot day, and we drove all the way to Sioux Falls with a big black rainstorm right behind us. We checked in to our hotel and had Panda Express for dinner around 8pm. The girls ran across the street to the mall and bought Dr. Who paraphernalia at Hot Topic. We had a great sleep and took off around 9 the next morning.

 

Day 2: Driving from Sioux Falls across Iowa to Nauvoo, Illinois

Sunday was a driving day with no fun stuff planned, just "car church". We had to drive the northern route through Minnesota because the highway down to Vermillion and across Iowa was washed out by the previous week's storms. So we drove over near Albert Lea, MN, then turned right into Iowa (our GPS got us lost looking for our chosen lunch spot, so we never actually made it to Albert Lea. When we got back into civilization, we were at this Iowa welcome center and we ate at the Burger King there. Stupid GPS!)

Niles and Ammon at the Welcome Center where we ate lunch.

We stopped in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa for some groceries in a huge rain storm. We drove on through Ft. Madison to Nauvoo and checked in to our hotel around 8:30pm. We were SO GLAD to be out of the car for a few days! Our hotel was actually a little house that was once the home of the manager of the Motel Nauvoo, adjoining the motel. It had two nice bedrooms and a bathroom, plus a kitchen, dining area, and Living Room with pull-out sofa, so everyone had a bed and space to stretch out and relax. We loved it, especially for the price of a regular hotel room.