Sunday, 23 July 2006
cross-country trip day 5: rushmore, bison, and searing heat
Lane’s first reaction upon seeing Mount Rushmore from the road? “I didn’t expect it to be so small.” To be honest, from far away it did look a lot smaller than the postcard photos make it seem. When we got closer, however, we were properly impressed by its grandeur. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of taking the .6 mile path around the base of the monument, and while Gerald and Lane and I all drank our bottles of water, Alex didn’t. When we got into the car, my outside temperature thermometer read 104, and by the time we got down the road to Custer State Park and stopped for lunch, Alex was exhibiting signs of heat exhaustion. So, Gerald took Alex back to the hotel, and Lane and I drove around the wildlife loop at the park, where we saw burros, deer, and herds of bison.
(We got a lot closer than that, but this photo fit best in the entry.)
The interesting thing about South Dakota is that the view from the interstate (at least here in Rapid City) is really deceptive. From I-90 (and our hotel) it looks flat as a pancake. But go 20 miles south and you’re in the mountainous Black Hills area, with twisting roads running through hilly terrain. These are the hills that spurred the phrase “there’s gold in them thar hills.” You certainly wouldn’t know it if you just drove through on the interstate.
This evening we’re hanging around the hotel so that Alex can recover. Lane and I went out to dinner at the Denny’s across the street and had a great time…he’s such good company when it’s just the two of us. Now that we’re back, we’re sitting in the hotel lobby where Lane’s watching the big HDTV and I’m soaking up the free wifi, while Gerald does the laundry (hey, I offered to do it, but he insisted).
I’m hoping Alex will be feeling better enough for us to leave Rapid City tomorrow…he’s sleeping right now, and hasn’t thrown up in a few hours, so if we can get some liquids into him tonight we should be fine. In that case, tomorrow will be a South Dakota tourist day—Wall Drug, followed by the scenic loop through Badlands N.P. (we’ll stay in the cars, since it’s supposed to be pretty hot again tomorrow), and ending up in Mitchell, home of the world-famous Corn Palace.
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Update, 8pm: Alex has woken up, and has energy and an appetite. I’m greatly relieved, and it looks like our original travel plan for tomorrow holds.
tips for the techno-savvy traveller
I’ve learned a few things this week about using my computer for travel planning. A few sites that have become indispensable for us as we do our day-to-day reservations (we didn’t want to book too far in advance because we weren’t sure how far we’d get each day):
- TripAdvisor, which has the greatest number of consumer reviews of hotels, and has helped us avoid hotels that people said were particularly dirty or unpleasant. As a result, we’ve had no terrible experiences with hotels.
- Orbitz, which let us see at a glance which hotels have free wifi, free breakfast, and a pool—three things we like on road trips.
- Priceline, which let us book a hotel even when all the other sites (Expedia, Orbitz, and the hotel chain sites themselves) said there weren’t any rooms available.
- America’s Byways, which provides photos and maps of the scenic byways if you want to avoid the boring interstates.
For offline computer-based planning, I’ve found that Microsoft Streets & Trips is significantly more useful than any of the online mapping tools. It allows you to specify your typical driving speeds and frequency of rest stops, your daily start and stop times, and waypoints—including the length of time (in hours or days) that you plan to stay. This has made it possible for us to reroute along the way, and get accurate, detailed estimates of time for each leg of the trip. I have the GPS unit that’s supposed to work with it, but after a few months of flawless operation it stopped working. :(
Our Garmin GPS, however, came back to life—just in time for us to embark on this trip. Hallelujah! It really is useful to have, especially when you take a wrong turn, or decide to leave your original route for a scenic byway. Another nice feature is that it provides your elevation, which was fun to track as we made our way across the Rockies. (I think the highest point for us was leaving Yellowstone, where our elevation was over 9,000 feet.) The unit we have was the most economical one we could find, and except for the unexpected refusal to work for the first two weeks of July, it’s been a great investment.
And while it’s not computer-related, our AAA membership continues to be a good investment. The guidebooks and maps are great, and if we’d stuck with our original routing, the TripTik would have been useful as well.
