We started this roadtrip in Dec of last year so, for the most part, we've been traveling in the off-season and we haven't had to book ahead for either hotels or attractions (DH might argue that many of the things I want to see are always off-season since no one else wants to see them). It has been a great run of seat-of-the-pants travel up until now but all good things come to an end and, tragically, we are going to have to blow by one of my must-dos. The original plan was to zip across the top end of South Dakota and, just inside Minnesota, there was going to be an opportunity to drive a WWII tank (if Martin W was doing particularly well with our investments, there was an extended opportunity to either drive the tank over a car or through a building). Crashing through the U.S. Midwest in a vintage Sherman tank was just calling to us (and by "us" I, of course, mean me), but apparently, much to DH's surprise, it calls to a lot of other people and, unbeknownst to us, you have to book this months in advance.

We still did the drive through South Dakota and, despite my tankless sulking, we enjoyed a stop at two of the bigger highlights in the area: Wall Drugs, and a drive through the SD Badlands. The Badlands of South Dakota you may have heard of- there doesn't seem to be quite the treasure-trove of dinosaur fossils that the Badlands around Drumheller has but they cover over 64,000 acres and there’s quite a few living critters if you tire of the landscape(including the black-footed ferret that was prematurely declared extinct in 1972). It would be hard to tire of the landscape however and we had to keep stopping as DH was insistent that I take an endless stream of photos as we wound our way through the area.

Wall Drug is an attraction that most people have never heard of but it definitely puts the 'cheese’ in ‘cheesey’. Even if you have no desire to see it, after you pass the 50th sign with yet another promotion of the place (before the 1960's era of "highway beautification" banned most billboards, Wall Drug touted its free ice water on 3,000 billboards in all 50 states), raw curiosity takes over and you just have to see if they really do sell 5 cent coffee. It’s a shameless tourist trap but the story behind it is a good one- after struggling for a few years in a small town, the owner decided to take advantage of the traffic zipping by his front door (heading to Mount Rushmore) and he put signs all along the highway offering free ice water to anyone who stopped. Now it’s a 20,000 sq ft behemoth in the shape of an old western town and you can buy just about anything inside especially if it’s made of plastic- unbelievably the store takes in more than $10 million a year and draws some two million annual visitors to a remote little town.

Beyond the cheese, we also stopped in to see one of the Minuteman Missile Silo areas. They were stuck in the cornfields of the Dakotas because of their proximity to the Russians (and presumably if they were targeted, there wouldn’t be a lot of people at risk). I know that these things were never a particularly well kept state secret, but should you really be putting them on full display for anyone with a camera and a pair of khaki shorts.

It was good fun but I still want to drive a tank (and no Bonnie, Marks' truck doesn’t qualify… although it is close).