We actually had an Alaskan Cruise/Canadian adventure planned. It was all set to go. Well, as you can imagine......... covid came around and changed a LOT of plans.
We ended up coming up with a VERY roughly planned New York, Connecticut trip. Well, some of the stuff we had hoped to do on that trip was looking iffy in many ways.
So we thought about doing something relaxing. We wanted to do something that didn't involve a ton of social interaction (BUT we still did want to get "out" and do some exploring).
We thought about some trips we have enjoyed in the past. I am always up for Gettysburg. Still, that is a social, and often crowded area.
We thought about spending a week in our home state, or Tennessee, but... well, thats just not really "getting away".
AND, we both really enjoyed our time in South Dakota last year. We knew we were wanting to get back soon anyway, so.... we did a repeat trip to South Dakota!
Most of the parks are not crowded, there is a lot of room, and you can do a lot of exploring from the comfort of your own car!
Plus, we called our favorite South Dakota Hotel, the Alex
Johnson, and rooms were available and reasonable! We would be staying several nights in the great town of Rapid City AGAIN!
This was a bit of a last minute trip...... AND we ended up tweaking it a bit right before leaving.
You know that I love Nebraska, and we have always stopped in two of my favorite towns (Fremont and Omaha) on previous trips. Well, we realized that we could make some impressive stops in Iowa and Minnesota if we cancelled Nebraska. I hated to do that, but the thought of what we would be getting with the trade off was too exciting.
We ended up going to the Surf Ballroom and the "Day the Music Died" crash site. You probably know what I am talking about. More on that later.
AND, we could hit part of Minnesota, making our first trip through that great state! In fact, we would mark TWO states off of our list with this trip (Minnesota and North Dakota). We would ALMOST get to a THIRD new state (Montana) but we had to pass on that one.
One of our rules of visiting a state is you can't go there JUST to go there. Well, we ALMOST routed a very brief part of the road trip THROUGH Montana (when driving back to Rapid City South Dakota from Medora North Dakota) but it was going to add more time than we could spare to our trip. AND, we would be doing it for the sake of
doing it. We chose to save Montana for another day.
We visited a few places we saw in 2012 and wanted to visit again in 2019 but couldn't (Devils Tower and Deadwood). We visited several sites for a third time (Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, the Hotel Alex Johnson and a few restaurants). AND, we got to see several things for the first time- MAINLY Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota!
As you may have noticed, I have been enjoying filming as we travel lately. I plan to still blog, but it might be more video focused starting with this trip. It has brought me a lot of joy watching my videos again and talking about them.
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