Minneapolis, MINNESOTA

We had a couple of stops on our journey from Mt. Rushmore across to Minneapolis. First day we drove into Rapid City where we took a quick walk around the streets. On every corner they have a bronzed statue of all the American Presidents. A quick visit to Starbucks (seems to be the only place to find half decent coffee over here) and on we go. Took a detour off the I90 into the Badlands National Park. Took a scenic drive through, which only took around an hour in the car. No animals sighted through the 'canyon like' landscapes. Scoop thoroughly enjoyed it as he is now a National Park junkie! Myself and the kids thought it was very bland and sarcastically thought of the song line from Bruno Mars........"Hmmm here we are .....this is great!" Camped the night in our tent in Mitchell - South Dakota.

Mitchell is the home to the world's only 'Corn Palace!' We took a tour through the complex the next morning on our way out of town. It consists of a large building with it's entire exterior covered in artwork made from purposefully grown coloured corn cobs (12 colours) and husks of which they change each year. 275,000 ears of corn in total!  It was pretty amazing - check out the pics. Inside the building is a basketball stadium. For college basketball it is the most preferred venue to play at outside of Madison Square Gardens!

Stopped at Sioux Falls along the way for lunch (massive waterfalls run through the towns mains gardens). Kids got time to ride their scooters along the bike paths and burn off some energy before making the long ......boring.......straight.......flat stretch of road that took us to the North Dakota border (State # 13) purely just for the photo of the State sign. 4 hours of my life of which I will never get back! **Tony & Dianne - David got his way! However we did see our very first Bald Eagle and a nice black Trans Am (with BANDIT) license plates.

Not wasting anytime in North Dakota - took the first right, drove for 10 minutes and headed into Minnesota (state #14)!
Headed east towards the I94, which will take us in to Minneapolis, and found a little place called Alexandria to set up camp for the night. Took us a while to find a campground and eventually had to settle on a ........RV park/campground which also doubled as the local "SHOOTING RANGE!"
The locals blasted off clay targets and shots for a few hours as we set up then left as the rain started to fall. Couldn't wait to hit the cities again for the luxury of a motel!! Had been told that there was a 'heat wave' heading towards Minneapolis for the w/end so off in search of good weather.

Packed up in the rain and headed into Minneapolis. Jackson said.... "Oh I can't do this camping thing anymore!" So long without Television and a real fridge - the kids had done well.

It RAINED ALL DAY in Minneapolis! Very warm but still rained. Minnesota is notorious for it's lakes. It has over 10,000 of them - seriously, it's written on their number plates!
Headed into "Mall of America" - this is America's biggest mall. It is all indoor and has over 300 - 400 shops, which surrounds around 7 acres of Nickelodeon Universe! Roller coasters, rides, Ferris wheels, characters to meet etc.
Day 2 - It RAINED ALL DAY in Minneapolis! Headed into "Mall of America" again. Jackson and I also got hair cuts. And then it THUNDER STORMED all night!
Day 3 - Woke up this morning and it was overcast and quite muggy. Locals and Weather presenters have been predicting such terrible heat conditions for today and into next week. Up around the 90 - 100 degrees. This only equates to 32 - 38 degrees, so bring it on we say!

It is similar to Cairns weather here,  the best way to describe it. Went and found the Vikings NFL Stadium and then found some nice lakes near the city centre and walked around them. Around 6 - 8kms - Looked like Lake Wendouree but with more water and fancier houses!

Day 4 saw our absolute highlight of the Minnesota tour. Friends we had met at Yellowstone National Park had invited us into their home for an early "Thanksgiving dinner" (as we have to leave the country before the real one in November). It was amazing! I have never seen a bird so big......a 9kg TURKEY, with all the trimmings, finished off with PUMPKIN PIE! .....Mum I will get you the recipe. xoxo

A day filled with good food, good wine, good friends and even good weather! Mike and Becky (our hosts) had a lovely home in Plymouth which backed onto an open with 3 soccer fields, a baseball arena and ice hockey rink, where we played with the dog, went for a walk and played 'bean bag toss'. A huge thank you to them for having us into their home for the day/evening. If everybody we meet along the way are that nice, we have some more good times ahead.

Headed off from Minnesota this morning which now sees us in Green Bay (home of the Green Bay Packers NFL team) Wisconsin (State #15).

Stay warm,
Team Connor USA.

Mount Rushmore

Spent the night in a little town called Spearfish South Dakota (State #12), heading towards our next stop of Custer (20 miles from Mount Rushmore). **Useless information - The river in Spearfish is known to freeze from the bottom upwards!! 
On the way we were advised to take 2 scenic routes off the main highways by people we had met at Yellowstone. The scenery did not disappoint. Well worth the extra miles for great video footage and photo's. (Thanks Mike & Chy).

We pitched our trusty tent at a little campground called Beaver Lake - Custer. Weather is great! Park has a water slide and a pool which we have used everyday after our daily adventures. In the dead of night we can even hear the Coyote's off in the distance howling at the moon. Since being here we have visited the Crazy Horse Monument, Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park.

The Crazy Horse Monument is the Indian equivalent to Mount Rushmore. It represents the Native American tribes. It is a sculpture in the side of a mountain, similar to Mount Rushmore but on a much larger scale, and it is still a work in progress. It is not Government funded at all, it relies solely on the admissions and donations from the public. To give you an idea of size, the entire 4 Mount Rushmore heads fit into the face of the Crazy Horse head space. The work on the sculpture has been going for 70 years and there is no perceived timeline of when it will be completed!

Mount Rushmore as you probably know contains 4 of America's influential Presidents. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Each was chosen for their contribution towards the American way of life. We did a hike around the area and then ate the best and biggest ice creams we've had since we landed - sorry Jenna but Ben & Jerry's will now take 2nd place!

Have also visited Custer State Park. This park didn't seem to have as many or varied types of animals as Yellowstone but....'boy did they make up for it in quantity!" We found a herd of Bison (approx 400) just wildly roaming through one of the RV parks! The campers were all peering out their windows wondering what was going to happen next.

We head off tomorrow, next destination is Minneapolis - Minnesota via North Dakota border (purely for the picture of the sign). Catching up with a family that we'd met in Yellowstone in Minneapolis. They have offered to do a 'Thanksgiving' dinner in July for us (traditionally held in November) as we have to leave the country before the real one takes place. We are so exited to partake in our first 'homecooked' meal since departing the shores of Australia...... Mum I miss your Lasagna so badly!!

Next blog will be after then in approx 6 days time with Master chef 'Thanksgiving' photo's!

Stay warm!

Team Connor USA.

Yellowstone National Park!

Our first impression of Yellowstone National Park was that it was such a natural wonder! We were later to realise that there are so many landscape changes that lay within the 3472 square mile boundaries. Up to 30,000 people daily (across the summer months) visit the park. And up to 3 million annually!

The park has 4 entrances north, south, east and west and offers a 142 mile Grand Loop Road to take the thousands of visitors as safely as possible around the north and south loops of the park. Most of these roads are closed over the winter months due to the snow. 85 trail head that offers 1200 miles of hiking trails for those who are a little more adventurous than us!

Approx 6 mile into the park we leave the state line of Montana and into the state of Wyoming.
Just around this first corner we were greeted by a fast flowing stream surround by around 20 resting bison! These are huge beasts that appear quite mangy as they loose their winter coats. We thought - this is great! All this wildlife is right here in front of us on the sides of the road. It shouldn't be too hard to see a bear!
We were also amazed at how much 'dead wood' was laying around on the forest floor. I thought why hasn't someone cleaned all this up. I was later to find out that because it is a National Park it just has to stay there. To make this even more amazing was, when we reached our campground  we had to pay $7 for a small box of wood and $2.50 for kindling that was imported in from the state of Idaho!! Belinda Jane's fault.......Dad/Daryl could've done with a truck load sent over from you by the time we'd finished just to keep warm!

We put up our recently purchased $70 tent from Target and blew up our $10 airbeds. We bought our sleeping bags from home in Australia and thought we were all set.......then the beautiful sun went down.......
Oh my........8500 feet elevation was where our little campground stood on the Continental Divide, with it's snow capped peaked mountains hovering over the picturesque Yellowstone Lake (which I wondered why no one was swimming in - but it was too damn cold)! We wore 2 jumpers to bed and I have never been so cold in my whole entire life. It got to around 32 degrees F, (so equivalent to 0 degrees Celsius). Once the glorious sun rose above the trees to provide us with another glorious day we drove for 2 hours back into town and bought more blankets! We suffered through 6 nights of bone chilling, sole destroy patches of sleep and by the end of it I had 5 jumpers on! The day experiences was worth the nightly pain.

Each day greeted us with new adventure. From the ever changing scenery landscapes to looking at Geysers, hiking to Waterfalls and continuing our search for the sight of the wildlife on offer.
Scoop got up early one morning and took photo's of the sunrise.

By the end of day 3 we were very disheartened that we still hadn't layed eyes on a bear. Considering we have a bear box right behind our tent, we expected to see some by now. Now a bear box is a metal cabinet like a pantry that all foods have to be stored in so the bears don't get it. We were not allowed to cook in the same clothes that you sleep in, nor were you allowed to even take so much as a bottle of water to bed with you in case the bears come into your tent!

The 4th day we drove up to the north loop of the park. Hours hiking into waterfalls and eyes peeled for the sight of bear. To date we saw Chipmunks, Elk, Moose, Badgers, Polkhorn, Bison and birds.
Then ALAS.....there it was - up ahead on the roadside through the ever backlog and congestion of RV's, cars, and Harleys ( which is always a dead giveaway that something interesting is out there) - our first sighting of a BLACK BEAR playing in the water.

2 mile up the road we then saw our 2nd bear sighting! More than happy for the day we headed back home only to see a Park Rangers truck on the side of the road looking at another bear up in the woods. We thought this one was a Grizzly bear at first (due to it's light golden coat) but were later to learn the subtle differences between the two. Black bear can also have golden coats. So 3 black bear sightings for the day along the north loop. Our campground was on the bottom of the south loop.

Met 3 lovely families on our stay at the camp ground. Which is exactly what we had been missing from Motel life. Being able to interact with other like minded families, adult conversations, kids being able to play with other kids, drinks and cooking Jiffy Pop & SMORES by the campfire! We saw these SMORES kits in the shops which consisted of sticks, marshmallows, crackers and Hershey's chocolate. We decided not to purchase as we didn't know what to do with the Graeme's crackers and Hershey chocolate! After some cultural education on SMORES, we now know what to do and are going to be on every camping shopping list. **Mark Munson - Buy a SMORES kit from your American Foods website (you won't be disappointed)!
We hope to catch up with these extremely hospitable people on the remainder of our trip as they all live in parts of the country that we are heading towards.

We also took in Grand Teton National Park, which is below Yellowstone out the south exit. Didn't encounter any wildlife down this way but the 40 mile long Grand Teton Mountain range, added  more magnificent scenery and landscapes to our gallery.

Out the south gate of Grand Teton Park is the heavily tourist town Jackson (for snow boarders, skiers and mountain bikers alike)! Went this way for the novelty of getting a photo of the sign for our Jackson and also to get Internet service to check emails!!! Starting to fret with no phone or Internet (or even power to charge equipment up).

Packed up our camping gear the next morning and headed for the hot weather, showers, crisp queen size bed sheets and hot breakfasts of the Days Inn Motel in Worland Wyoming! What a feeling that was after 6 nights in the forest!

Having a few nights in motels along our journey to Mount Rushmore South Dakota!

Enjoy ALL the pictures of our camping adventure in the gallery.

Love Team Connor USA. xoxox

P.S. A man was killed by a grizzly the day we left the park, on a trail we had encountered during our adventures!!!!
P.S.S. To much video footage to even contemplate a you tube link, Team Connor video night when we get home.