So, we hit the road. And, almost immediately, we hit traffic. As in, as-bad-as-Boston-rush-hour-traffic. And we look at ourselves and say "Who knew? Who would have thought Minneapolis had rush hour traffic?". And we resigned ourselves to sitting in traffic. (The smart ones among you will now have figured out just about how long we spent in the mall. Ugh.) And as we come around the long curve of our on-ramp, we see that there's a merge of four lanes of traffic into one, with NO traffic beyond the merge, and we say "Aha! It's just a bad merge! Never fear!" And as we get closer, we see one of the strangest things I've ever seen in my life. There are four stoplights at this merge, each cycling through red-green-yellow about one color every two seconds. And signs that say "One car on each green." It becomes clear that, no Toto, we're not in Boston anymore, and they appear to regulate courtesy in this strange land that we have touched down in. So, we wait our turn, and sail down the remainder of the entrance ramp, onto a highway on which there is very little traffic.
As we drive away, I say to myself, "Well, that was a bad merge, perhaps setting things up that way made sense." And then I realized that this was set up on EVERY SINGLE on-ramp. Every single one had two lanes of traffic halfway down, then merged into one, with these darn traffic lights slowing up traffic. And, as we were close to rush hour, in some cases the traffic on the ramps actually seemed to be interfering with traffic on the overpasses! This was so strange to me that I just had to get a picture.
Sadly, this picture does not do the weirdness justice. I would point out that you should note the LINE of cars on the right, the lack of cars on the left, and the lack of cars in the foreground, which is the highway itself. But, I guess all in all, it's not that much weirder than the rotary, eh?
Leaving the strangeness of Minneapolis behind us, we hit
the open road. And in 85 degree weather, in a convertible, you get pretty
thirsty. So we stopped at a Hardee's and got sodas and some french fries. We
pulled back onto the road and quickly discovered that there were no straws in
our bag. And, of course, the cups were full to the brim. As we sat there
contemplating these cups of soda which sat there mocking us, I reached to get
something out of my purse. When Carrie asked if I had anything in my purse that
could act as a straw, I realized I did! I quickly eviscerated my pen, and we
were in business. And, had to take a picture of my ingenuity, even though as
much as Carrie wanted it, I will *not* be getting the nickname McGuyver from
this.
So, as we were driving along, and realized that if we took a jog about 20 miles out of our way, we could pick up the northwestern corner of Iowa in our travels. Since that offered the bonus of being able to stay off the interstate, and on neat back roads, we decided to go for it.
And it was fun, but don't let anyone fool you, there's not a lot in Iowa but corn. Very pretty, restful corn, but corn nonetheless. Broken by the occasional appearance of a corn silo, of course. Just to prove how much corn there was, we took picture for y'all to see. Complete with a silo way far off in the distance.
And if we hadn't jogged down through Iowa,
we might have missed the second strangest traffic pattern I've ever seen (And it
might even be tied for first, in reality). We're driving along this two lane
(one lane in each direction) back road through the cornfields, and we come up to
an intersection where there's road cones set up blocking the road, some
construction signs, and a blond teenaged girl sitting in a lawn chair. We stop,
highly unsure what to do, and hoping like hell we don't have to turn around. The
blond chickie gets up and walks over to the car. Carrie rolls down her window
(why she rolls down the window in a *convertible*, I'm not sure). Carrie asks
her what we're supposed to do, and she replies "Wait here for the pilot
car." And so we wait, making polite small talk with the nice every-stereotype-you-ever-had-about-Iowa girl, talking about the joys of working outside in the hot sun with a hangover, and how we're from Boston, and she's been to New York and before long we see a car approaching, with a big sign on it that says, you guessed it, "PILOT CAR FOLLOW ME". Turns out they're doing construction (not very much, though) and have one lane of the road closed to the next intersection, and rather than have two people on either end with radios, they have two people on either end telling people to wait for the pilot car, which then leads the traffic through the construction like the Pied Piper of Iowa. Hmmmm, interesting. Another one that we took a picture of, so y'all would believe us.
Now, my friend Arwen assures me that this is a fairly comon practice (at least where she comes from in the South), so maybe y'all will believe me anyway, but for a suburban/urban chickie from the Northeast this was pretty damn weird!
Well, after a long 5 or 6 hours in the car, we finally reached our hotel, found some dinner at the local Outback Steakhouse, and planned the sights to see in scenic Sioux Falls before heading off for Fargo the next day. We settled on going to see the actual falls for which the city is named.