Hi Mom!

So the RVs have torn across Minnesota, over the Mississippi, and entered the promised land: Wisconsin. Land of beer, brats, Brewers, Badgers, Packers, protests, and, most importantly, parents.

This is "Real America" (bite me, Palin), and I was more than happy to drag the motley crue of Bay Area techo-elites (from all around the world) over the river and through the woods (literally) by backroads, cutting though forests and farm fields to my little hometown to, well, you know, meet the parents.

Well, and buy beer. New Glarus rules.

Most people like me would worry about their parents embarrassing them in front of their coworkers. I worried about exactly the opposite.

But they all got along swimmingly, and we had a cozy little evening, even if there was a little cognitive dissonance in having my family meet my other family. Will's dads even drove over from Appleton (Will and I both went to UW and he's also Robin's boyfriend. Cue It's a Small World).

I'd call it a perfect evening if only the Brewers weren't currently down 11-6 in the 6th in game six of the NLCS. Not that I'm bitter about it.

Now it's back on the road. We've got a long drive up north tonight where we'll hang with the yoopers. Uff da!

South Dakoooota and Minnesooooota

We visited the famous Wall Drug Store, which turned out to be a small mall complex with a Wild West theme. Wood panel walls, leather and mineral goods for sale, stern black and white photographs of Native Americans with their names in caligraphy ("Rain in the Face", "Low Dog"...), as well as home made ice cream, which we took to go.



Dinner was at the Anchor Grille in Chamberlain, South Dakota, "Where friends meet." Our waitress was a petite woman of about 21: sweet, doting, and accommodating, her name tattooed on one forearm and her son's name tattooed on the other next to "lil mamma". She explained that she had about 16 tattoos "all over".

We sat directly behind a group of locale hunters wearing camouflage and splashes of orange.


Meanwhile, doogle flaunted his "Go vegan or die" world view.


For dessert, we had the "deep fat fried snickers", a snickers bar wrapped in a tortilla, deep fried, then served with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and cinnamon.


Some of us had a different notion of dessert. After setting up at our campsite, we welcomed Jinnah and Astrid to their first night on the RV with Macallan and Talisker scotches, Joose and Four Loko. The last of the liar's dice players finally quit around 5am.


We caravanned through Minnesota this morning.


And had lunch at a rest stop, where deep fried cheese curds welcome us to the midwest.

Minnesota

Flat. Wind farms. That is all.

These are blades on the move:

Let It Snow

Let it Snow as sung by drunken engineers

No trip through the Northern states would be complete without...

Mount Rushmore! Great family photo op. Great opportunity to make Kennedy jokes.

We are at Mt Rushmore

But this isn't the Mt Rushmore post. Jelena is going to post it. This is the post about Jelena posting the Mt Rushmore post. We must go deeper.

Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming

We arrived at our campsite at 1am and commenced the four loko proceedings, trying to keep warm by the fire. The bravest souls (Bill and Doug) camped outside over night in the sub-freezing temperatures.

As for me, I would have frozen despite sleeping in the RV were it not for Robin saving my ass (well, toes...) with a nalgene bottle filled with hot water. Robin: making my life awesomer every day. :)

We woke up this morning with a view that made the cold worthwhile.
A short hike around the base of Devil's Tower was wonderful after a few sedentary days, and then we were on the road again to pick up Jinnah and Astrid at Rapid City Regional Airport, South Dakota.