wow....technical difficulties.....very hard to keep our laptop charged. Finally found a coffee shop with wi-fi.

Dec 20
Hit the road early with a fine dusting of snow. About minus 6. Crossed the Mississipi River. Snowed going accross Minnesota. Stopped at a rest station for about an hour until the plows got out on the road. They don't start plowing until it stops snowing...We got back on the road and counted 12 cars in the ditch in under and hour and decided to pull over and have lunch and see what happens. We had lunch and rested up and decided to drive a little further. It wasn't much better so we stopped at a truck stop and treated ourselves to a $3.00 shower. It felt wonderful!! We spent the night at Wal-mart. Wisconsin was nice.

December 21
Hit the road around 8:00am. A ton of fog today. Stopped at the corn palace in Mitchell South Dakota...Kind of cool. The art work was amazing. I can't believe they did all that with corn and they change it every year. We crossed the Missouri River...I guess we are now considered to be in the West. We were forced to pull over again due to heavy fog. We decided we were going to try and head for the badlands even though the weather was bad. As soon as we entered the Badlands National Park it started freezing rain....we decided we still wanted to go....When we got to the gate....it cleared for the first time in the last couple of days. The park ranger said hurry up and go...we did a short hike and took some photos and we had the entire national park to ourselves. We only met 1 car...It was amazing being in there all by ourselves. We saw a ton of deer, coyote and we were totally impressed our trailer made it up the steep hills with the conditions. The park ranger said "oh you are from Canada you will be fine...I think you would have loved this drive dad....Spent the night at Wal-mart. It has been so convient staying there and having access to the groceries as all the wal-marts seem to be super centres. We haven't eaten out once yet.

Dec 22
Left around 8:30am and headed for Mount Rushmore. Totally fogged in again. The locals say the weather is never like this. It is usually warm and dry. Again I can't believe out luck as we entered the Black Hills National Forest the sun came out. We did a little hike at Mount Rushmore. It was very cool to see. The hike was good, nice and sunny and the forest was beautiful and smelled wonderful. You won't believe it.....but we had the entire place to ourselves. I finally figured out who the other 2 presidents were...hehe....For the kids on our Street that are reading this good history question for you....who are the 4 presidents???
The drive through Hwy 16 and 385 was beautiful. I love the Black Hills National Park. I definately would like to see more of South Dakota another time when it is less foggy. Great place to drive dad...We saw 2 huge bald eagles (made me think of Greg) We are just stopped long enough to charge the battery for our camera and laptop and we are going to high tail it out of here as they are expecting a huge storm. We are very close to the Montana border. As long as the weather holds out for us we should be at Steph's early afternoon Christmas Eve. We figure we have another 13 hours. Hope everything is going good for everyone and I miss you all..
Love
Deb