On the road to Boulder

I left Wautoma and Red and Sophie on Tuesday to head to a university town in Minnesota called Mankato.  I stayed at a perfectly awful motel but it's location turned out to be spectacular for me.  First, it was across the street from a Starbucks.  That in itself would make me a happy person.  But it gets much better - much better!

Second, it was near a Chipotle Mexican Grill which is a fast food chain with organic and sustainably farmed foods that I have been curious to try for a long time.  So I got a veggie burrito bowl to go and it was actually delicious.  Very impressive for fast, cheap food - I mean it is actually food!

Third, it was near both a car wash and a petco and I wanted to go to both.  Tramps ears have developed a yeast-y smell from all her swimming and I wanted to get some ear wash.  And the car was covered inside and out with sand and dirt from so much time in the woods and alongside beaches.  Since I will be primarily on the road now and in cities, I figured it would make sense to clean her up at this point.

Petco had what I needed and then some.  I got Tramp some new food to mix in with her kibble and she seems to love it; and I got her a brush to see if I could get her to look a bit more presentable, but she won't let me use that so....

But look at this!  This is the same front fender I showed you on the day I left with the awful scrape marks resulting from the good Samaritan who "helped" me back out around a double parked catering van.  Well, this wonderful car wash had a detail man who, for $14.11 buffed out the hideous white paint and I have a beautiful, clean, whole car again.  Yippee!

I left Mankato around noon and got here, to Sioux Falls around 3 after a pretty ride on deserted county roads due west through Minnesota.  I don't know how to quite describe the size of the farms along this route.  Endless.  Beautiful field after field of crops - many in different stages of maturity with different colors from gold to green so dark it looks almost black and different densities and heights and shapes.  Then, every once in a while, I'd come up to the industrial part of this industrial farmland.  Instead of the iconic red barn and pretty silo that I saw in Wisconsin, here there were gleaming silver silo factories - three, four, five or more giant silos of different circumferences kind of knit together with gleaming steel rectangular buildings and horizontal beams.  Huge constructions.  This is serious farming and processing.  And the wealth it creates shows through.  Nothing or no one is struggling here.  These agribusiness companies or chemical companies who own and manage these industrial farms may feign poverty and beg for subsidies, but come out and see these places and you see money being printed.  It is awesome.  It is beautiful in its own special way.  It is NOT business requiring taxpayer subsidy. 

Now I am settled in to a funky hotel in Sioux Falls, ND.  If I wake early tomorrow, as I did today, I will take the Tramp down to see the falls.  She has done nothing but sleep since we left Wautoma - no sweet puppies to play with; no sweet Sophie to swim with.  She is bored and she lets me know it.  So, if we can, we will walk in Falls Park to see the falls that give this city its name and try to find a place for Tramp to swim.  Then it is off to a B&B in Nebraska on our way to meet up with my step-son Edward in Boulder on Sunday.