Sioux Falls

Chillen' here in Sioux Falls, SD, which to me seems a lot like Edina, or maybe Red Wing. It's like a big suburb. What strikes me is that the streets seem very empty, though there are lots of people about, and what strikes John is the large amount of smokers here. It's kind of curious to see so many smokers, I guess we've gotten used to the non-smoking luxury of Minneapolis. We're currently in our Best Western Ramkota Hotel room at the end of a long hallway of families with kids who are here solely to utilize the water park and I just have to thank the gods we didn't book a pool side room. The room is quite nice, very "chain hotel-esque" which is okay because we know what we're getting: a decent bed, a coffee maker and a safe place to kick our feet up. At least I don't feel the need to worry that there's a dead hooker under the bed.

I drove most of the way here until I got my mid-day sleepies and we switched spots at the saddest little rest stop you ever did see. The drive was an absolute luxury with virtually zero traffic the entire way. We had our upbeat tunes cranked most of the way to get us pumped for driving and we had fun singing and goofing together. There were countless hawks and eagles on the way, and we saw a massive eagles nest before we even got out of Minneapolis, so that was cool. It was beautifully sunny, but so windy it was hard to maneuver our little boxy Toodlebug! Of course, our Toodlebug was the coolest car on the road, contrary to what all these red, sporty cars would have you believe.

Once here in Sioux Falls, we lounged a bit before heading out to scope out a couple of bead stores. The first was a cute little shop that had a free class going on, they had some of the most unique jewelry I've seen in a long time, and they were selling the most beautiful cabochons I've ever seen!! They had a cute sign that said, "Shoplifting is bad karma". I'll try to find their website to post with our other links. The second store was a complete ripoff; they were selling mini-strands of gemstone chips for twice the price of what a normal strand should cost, all their beads were in champagne glasses that cluttered the entire store which made it hard to find anything, and they didn't have anything I wanted there anyway, so we split. We ended up eating at a funky diner that seemed to be a local hot spot, and the food was good. John had a corned beef and swiss sandwich with coleslaw, and I went the full fried/fatty selection with a fish sandwich and fries, which I'm now paying for in a big way :( We did have a very pleasant walk near The Falls that we'll post pix of in a minute. Sadly, they're right near a sheep slaughter house which I tried to ignore as we drove past on the way in and out of the parking lot. It seemed like most of Sioux Falls residents were at The Falls, and they're celebrating Cinco de Mayo today (for some reason) so there was live music and kids all crawling everywhere out on the rocks having fun. We took photos of some geese and their little goslings!!!!!! The mama in one of the photos is just giving me the evil eye even though I was far away shooting with the zoom lens. Cute motherly protector of those little yellow fuzz balls!

Anyway, I meant to make this a quick post because we haven't done too much yet, but here I've blogged most every detail! Geez, a blabbermouth even in writing ;)~ Anyway, tomorrow's post will be from Sylvan Lake, which reports are saying got 24 inches of snow the other day. Hmmm, flash floods...let's hope not!

Roadkill Report:
Three raccoons, a very decomposed deer (half of it, anyway), something that looked like a dog, and something that looked like nothing we could figure out...like a raccoon/fox. A silent lament for all the roadkill, please.

Mileage: 258.2