SORRY I'VE BEEN ABSENT

My husband and I just returned from 5 days away.  It had been a while so it was good to "get out of town" for a short trip.........shorter than we planned.  Our route took us on I-80 toward Council Bluffs IA and then North on I-29.  We saw very large sand bags still in place in several areas holding water back from the Missouri River flooding coming out on the Interstate.  

Our trip included going to the Blue Bunny Ice Cream parlor (in LeMars, Iowa), 1880 Town on I-90 in South Dakota (lots of pictures and items from the Dances With Wolves Movie and buildings depicting an old western town) and Devils Tower in Wyoming.

We had planned to go to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota but soon found out that the closest available place to stay along I-94 was over 200 miles away so that visit will have to be sometime in the future.  Although we were disappointed we learned that many of the motel rooms are being occupied by flood victims which has devastated so much of the state.  We figured they needed the rooms more than we did.

Since I need to get organized after getting home I'm just going to share a couple of pictures from our trip.

SOME FUN FACTS:  

1.) Storage freezer is 12 stories high and holds 53,000 pallets of ice cream.  

2.) They produce 100 million gallons of ice cream/year -- 50,000 gallons/day  

3.)  1.5 BILLION sticks/year for ice cream novelties 

4.) 8 million pounds of chocolate ice cream bar coating/year 

5.) Use enough strawberries each year to fill 1 million strawberry pies.

This is the only Corn Palace in the world.........we were told.  All of the decorating on the outside of the building is done with corn and they change the designs every year.  You will find it in Mitchell SD.

These are just a few of the pictures I took at 1880 Town which is on I-90 in South Dakota.  It's a fun place to visit and they have a diner made up of passenger train cars.  Information said that the entire Dances With Wolves movie was filmed in South Dakota.  The landscape we saw in the area sure looked like the movie.

Devils Tower in Wyoming is one National Park we had managed to miss on our various trips West so we made a special trip west to see it.  I've seen many pictures of it but to see it in person was so special.  There is a 1.3 mile black topped trail around it which we walked..........so worth it!  If you look closely at the third picture you will see 3 people who were climbing the tower and were about 2/3 of the way up when we saw them.

The last picture shown here is one I just had to take because we saw a lot wild flowers along the road but then we were seeing fields of them......beautiful yellow flowers.......and they seemed to be contained in certain areas.  I wish I knew what they were and if they are grown for a particular purpose.

The rest of our trip was mainly driving so not a lot of interesting pictures to post after that.  We did see areas in North Dakota where the water had been across the highway and sandbags in low spots were still holding some water back. 

I'll try to get back to posting cards soon but have some things I need to get caught up on.  Hope you enjoyed these pictures if you have never visited the sites.