2011 New York Trip-Day 5 – 07/24/2011 / 75071 / 2:50pm

2011 New York Trip-Day 5 – 07/24/2011 / 75071 / 2:50pm

Since Mid-Montana, the freeway periodically has signs that say “When Flashing, the road ahead is closed, turn around and return to (whatever the previous town was)”.  Thre are also occasional railway-type barriers that can be used to close the freeway.  All of which tells me that maybe I don’t want to be up here during the winter.

I stopped at a rest stop on I-90 just east of Wasta, SD.  I was just kind of killing time inside looking at the displays when one of the women there asked if she could help me.  I told her my planned next stop and she enthusiastically endorsed it. She asked about my route.  I laughed and said I just go where my GPS tells me to go.  She showed me an alternative to the I-90 route . . . going a bit north and taking I-14 off of I-20 and then following it east through Pierre.  She said it would be more scenic and I would see some kind of river or something dumping into the Missouri.  She even gave me a road map of the state in case my GPS died again.

So . . . . I got brave and followed her suggestion.  I is big-time farming land almost the whole way to Pierre.  I saw some fields (of what, I don’t know) that must have been a half-mile deep and three-quarters of a mile wide.  I saw a lot of corn, but it was all short.  I would love to see it when it is taller.  And rolls of hay . . . it seems that I was never out of site of a field littered with big rolls of hay.  Without exaggeration, I would not be surprised if I saw over a million rolls of hay.  I never get tired of traveling through farm land.  There are also lots of little bodies of water along the road.  They range from a hundred feet across to maybe a couple of hundred yards across.  I am curious about the source of the water, because I seldom ever saw any streams feeding them.  I can’t help but wonder if these are really good breeding areas for mesquitos.

I crossed the Missouri River going into Pierre.  I saw some partially submerged buildings along the banks – and it seemed that the water was awfully close to the bridge.  On the other side of the bridge, I saw hundreds of sandbags by a lot of the buildings – including the buildings on either side of my motel.