Sioux Falls KOA

… and sometimes you stay here. This is all part of the journeying and it was planned primarily to do laundry. And, as Altoistes say, there is no bad site in an Alto. We can close privacy curtains and have no idea where we are, or who is staring at us really close in the next site. Plus, hey! We’re right next to a Camping World and a gigantic U.S. flag. All good.

During the day, we traversed the southern border of Wisconsin and just crossed over into South Dakota before calling it a day. The countryside is a departure from the land of many lakes and is steadily transforming into solid farmland and open plains. We’d have gotten a shot of the ‘Welcome to South Dakota’ sign, except we received a spam phone call (more on spam later) right at the moment Richard was trying to take the picture. He called back, just to complain, and for some reason was passed to the voice mail for the Chinese Consulate of San Franscisco. If they need us for important international business, they’d better time their calls better in the future! Arf.

The hands down highlight of the day, however, was our visit to the SPAM museum in Austin, Minnesota. I’m am at something of a loss for how to capture this experience. I was certainly impressed by the sheer number of interactive exhibits. And not only do I now know the backstory of how the name came to be, but I also know that I am 20 SPAM cans tall. I think my favorite display was the “Monty Python” routine set to endlessly loop on a screen, proudly mounted atop a shelf made of SPAM cans, in all their glorious and variable flavor options. Sorry, we neither tasted nor purchased samples.

I remain impressed by how many wildflowers there are everywhere, even along the highway 90 thoroughfare. We will be sharing the road with travelers and truckers tomorrow as well, but then hope to land for a couple of days in a national park.

Total miles: 286.6, 14.1 mpg (headwind), 5 hours 36 min. It’s a KOA. Nuff said.