Tuesday, July 10, 2012

5states1day.

Dear 29,
Something has come over me. I have started taking the long way. Gone is my need for speed (this is a lie. a blatant lie. I can't stop thinking about motorcycles.) I'm an adventurer now, or an adventure-ish person. Or maybe I'm just a little less uptight.
I've been 29 for 38 days. I'm sure you know this because you've kept count as well using a paper chain or something, but in case you lost track, it's been 38 days (by the time I publish this it might be 39*.) After a swanky rager (with a serious view of the city shown above), and a rainy Des Moines Arts Festival, I packed up a blanket and lakeside wedding attire and headed North.
Having never been to either Dakota, I drove a little bit, or nearly two hours, outta the way to check them out. The Honda sure makes for a less stressful ride (RIP Focus). A few things that you'll find interesting about my five-states-one-day trip:
- Ellen DeGeneres reads her book Seriously, I'm Kidding for the audiobook version. And it's only about three hours long. So that got me to South Dakota and I laughed outloud (lol-ed) at least seven times.
- Dell Rapids, SD hosts Quarry Days the last weekend in June. There are free train rides. But if you are 29 and there alone, it will seem weird for you to wait in line with the parents and small children, so you probably should get out of line and get a root beer float instead. Dell Rapids' website says it's "Where South Dakota Rocks"which is awesome.
- South Dakota is about 210 miles tall. I drove at least 186 of those miles.
- North Dakota looks a lot like South Dakota. And most of it is closed on Sunday.
- In Minnesota you can't buy booze on Sundays.
It was interesting, despite what little you learned from this list.
This lakeside wedding was just perfect (Katie and Matt: I'm so happy for you). I did take the short route home with only 7.5 hours and two states covered. Nearly 1200 miles of untraveled (or at least untraveled by me) land has now been traveled. (This sentence wasn't very good.)
And when I got home (or yesterday) I found that I'd been given a $168 souvenir. Thank you, Souix City for keeping our Iowa roads safe with traffic cameras.
xo-LP
*38 days have passed. Actually 47 days have passed. I need to finish posts when I start them instead of letting them sit in the unpublished pile. 

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