Oh Canada….that’s all I know of that song

We’re almost there! Four and a half days and over 2,600 miles and we have nearly reached our destination. We’re in Michigan now and headed for the border. For the majority of our team this is their first time to Canada, so they’re pretty excited. This will be the farthest west I’ve been in Canada since I’ve been to Toronto before and Niagara Falls several times. Since immigration laws have been changing and tightening, we’re not sure what we’ll face at the border. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I finally got to see Mt. Rushmore the other day. I know you’ve all been waiting for that since I’ve been hyping it up in other posts. Well folks, the wait is over! It wasn’t really what I had expected, but then again it was exactly what I expected. What I mean by that is, if you’ve ever seen a picture of Mt. Rushmore, seen it in a movie, or on TV, you’ve pretty much seen all there is to see. It wasn’t what I expected in that it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s in Rapid City, South Dakota and at least the part we saw was still very folksy not extremely commercialized. They did however have a Sonic, so it gets a lot of bonus “Val Value Points” for that. We rolled in to Rapid City at about 4:00 PM on Tuesday. We were following the signs to Mt. Rushmore, but it was strange because there were some small hills around, but you couldn’t really see any mountains. We drove through a tunnel of rock and when we came out, we could see it- think the Fort Pitt Tunnel on 60 south with faces instead of buildings. Anyway, you could see these four faces peering over the trees before us. We saw a sign for “Free Parking” and since we try to be frugal, we took off for that. We found a parking lot with a sign that said, “Buses $50.” Something had gone awry. We asked the attended where the free parking from the aforementioned sign was. He informed us that the sign said “Fee Parking.” Big difference. Anyway, he didn’t charge us the full $50 since we weren’t commercial, we parked our home, and made our way to the faces. We probably only spent about a half hour there so perhaps I would be more impressed if we had more time and hiked closer to the carvings, but we only looked at them from the observation deck. Coming in from the parking lot, there is an Avenue of Flags with flags from all U.S. states and territories, then there is an observation deck, followed by an amphitheater, then Mt. Rushmore. The amphitheater was huge and it would be a perfect venue for a Silver Ring Thing show- call me National Park Service! Everything there is all Mt. Rushmored-up- even the vending machines had a huge picture of the mountain on it instead of huge picture of Dasani. From an art standpoint, Mt. Rushmore is beautiful. The carvings are very realistic and the presidents are instantly recognizable. From a me standpoint, it was kind of creepy. Four enormous, stone heads out in the wilderness staring down at the people that travel hundreds of miles to see them. I mean no disrespect to the presidents, the country, the sculptor, or the great people of Rapid City, South Dakota. Those were four great men who made this nation what it is today and they deserve this monument, the ones in DC, and many more. My point is: when I die, please don’t make a tribute to me that is a 60 foot tall replica of my head in stone. My head is large enough already. Start a scholarship fund or something.

We stayed in Mitchell, SD on Tuesday and made it past Chicago last night. Before we left South Dakota, we got fuel. This is always a big ordeal when we get fuel, a bunch of people have to go to the bathroom, some people want snacks, and we have to find people to pump diesel and wash the windows. This fuel stop was like no other and all of those things happened. We got back on 90 East and covered another half hour of ground when all of the sudden we heard a lot of honking and there was a lady beside us trying to get our attention. This has happened to us before. Silver Ring Thing is growing at an alarming rate and we have done shows in nearly every state, so we’re kind of a big deal (see, I told you my head was big enough already). In typical fashion, we see this lady waving to us, and we start waving back and feeling good about ourselves. However, in the back of my mind I knew that we had never done a show in South Dakota, so I thought it was a little strange. Our driver rolled down her window and the lady in the truck yelled over to us that she had forgotten to charge us for the second pump at our fuel stop. So you’re saying you don’t want an autograph? We went from being the best thing South Dakota has ever seen to criminals stealing fuel.

Driving through Chicago was nice. I’ve been there before and I really like that city. I’m hoping to go back for another week this summer so I picked up lots of travel maps in our hotel. If any one is looking for something to do the first week of August, let me know.