Chicago to Sioux Falls SD
9 am- Check out of Air BnB, load the suburban and hit the road.
PIt Stop at The Wormhole Coffee- retro 80s/90s quirky cafe with a Dolorian in the shop! Very kitschy and fun (and nostalgic for 80s kids like us)
The neighborhood around the shop reminds me of Austin, TX circa early 2000s, cool and fun. Lots of vintage stores, shops and puppies! (Very dog friendly)
9:30 am Chicago Mural
11:30 am Cross into Wisconsin
12:00 pm – Drive around Madison State House, annual art fair was happening so the main square was closed. If we had more time, we might have stopped.
12:30- Korben4 micro brewery for lunch. Tasty appetizers and personal pizzas, cute outdoor seating next to a highway
1:50 Pink elephant. We love the offbeat and slightly weird. We use two apps to find things along the way, Roadtrippers and Atlas Obscura. I saw a giant pink elephant statue outside of a gas station in Vienna MN and we had to stop.
(Did I mention that it has glasses?)
4:00 pm-ish Crossed into Minnesota. Amazingly beautiful and the first time I’ve been able to use the word Verdant in real life. We tried to drive into Great Bluffs State Park to se the Mississippi River overlook but there was a thunderstorm brewing so we turned back.
5:00pm- Pit stop at Fuzzy’s Italian Ice and Steam Coffee shop in Rochester, MN, very cute downtown area. We rushed back to the car, because it started sprinkling.
Speaking of rain, holy moley.
Driving into the farmlands of MInnesota, all is peaceful with a few drops of rain, until every phone in the car goes off in an alert. A tornado WARNING. As a former Texan, I have had my share of tornado warnings and have been in a town where a tornado touched down and destroyed an unoccupied school. We pulled over into the only building around, a gas station. Not my first choice, but literally the only structure in sight.I hustled (and I do mean hustled) the kids out of the car, around the building and into-a locked door and temporarily closed signs. The wind whipped our hair, and the air crackled with the approaching storm. With nowhere to go, we ran back into the car and got back on the highway. We searched but there was not a single public building anywhere. The rain started pummeling the car and the winds whipped so much that my husband struggled to keep the car in our lane. The tornado warning expired, only to be replaced by a severe thunderstorm warning. The rain was the heaviest I have ever seen (especially from inside a moving vehicle) We could not see more than a few feet in front of us, so Saurabh pulled under a very large underpass, along with a few other cars. We waited until it was a bit calmer and continued on the road (and through a lot more rain) until the sun finally came out again and we reached blue skies and…
The Green Giant in Blue Earth, MN
We ate a quick dinner at Cedar Inn Drive-in, a charming little 1950’s drive up.
10:30 pm- Arrive in Sioux Falls, SD (very thankful to be safe and in a sturdy building) and all is well.
