AMERICA IS BIG! We didn't realise quite how big until we got off the plane and had to drive 600 miles to our first destination! Took us about 8 hours after 2 flights already that day, and had a near tornado miss along the way....we reckon it was about 50 miles away and they move at 70mph, so glad we had our brown trousers on. First stop was Badlands, South Dakota after flying to Minneapolis via Chicago. Badlands is basically a lunar landscape on the Great Plains, that used to be an ocean thousands of years ago. It's pretty amazing to look at, although we could've done without it being 107 degrees fahrenheit. Allison Lobster was pretty sizzled, and went into mumbling mode! Next stop was the Black Hills, South Dakota (about another 400 mile journey), where we stayed about 5 miles from the Crazy Horse memorial. It'll look fantastic when they finish, but not much to show for 50 years graft! We also stopped off at Mount Rushmore (we were the token Brits) and visited a few tacky cowboy towns (if I hear one more yee-ha I'm gonna slap someone), where we saw where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and buried in Deadwood, and Buffalo Bill's town of Cody. At Cody we went to the rodeo, which was fantastic, although a little weird having to pray and sing along to the national anthem before it began. The mid-west is a little weird and stuck in the past in general. If you only came here in the US you'd think all Americans were taxidermists and lived in trailers! We still can't get over the advertisements for gifts, groceries, sporting goods and guns at the same shop. So far the cowboy history of the mid-west is a lot more prevalent than the Native American history, but we did stop off at Bear Butte (please enter jokes on the message board), which was Crazy Horse's stronghold and is very sacred to Native Americans. According to legend the buffalo woman came from the mountain and blessed them with buffalo (aka bison). Next we stopped off at Devils Tower, which again is a sacred place for many Native American tribes. After this it all went a bit wrong! We mentioned already America is big, but we didn't realise we would drive for the best part of 100 miles without seeing a town or a car. It all got a bit scary as the petrol needle headed down to empty, but luckily we found a garage with about 10 miles of 'gas' left. After this I was a bit excitable, and got pulled over by Sergeant John Burnell (for those who don't know watch World's Wildest Police videos on Sunday night) and rewarded with a 'citation' for driving 15 miles over the speed limit. What made this more annoying was that it was the first time I'd gone over the speed limit the whole time, as nobody speeds in America. Next stop was Little Bighorn and Custer's last stand, which was really good and actually focuses more on the Native American viewpoint now (this changed in the last few years apparently), so was really interesting. We stayed in another trailer park town before moving on to Yellowstone Park, where we saw the geysers and had a few run ins with some bison. It's pretty scary when they square up to you and give you an icy stare through the car window, so again lucky we had on the brown strides! We also saw a black bear, but no yogi bear or booboo. Pictures to follow when we figure out how to do it. I hope we're as witty as Davis's ghost writer!