GoofyMom's Great American Road Trip to Florida - Page 15 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
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There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
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If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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We wanted to take a tour in one of the caves that the Black Hills has to offer. Jewel Cave was the largest one (2nd largest in the world) and we thought it sounded quite interesting. We pulled up to the Visitor Centre to get our tour tickets, and found out we had *just* missed the tour we wanted. We could still hear them in the hallway. So we bought tickets for the next tour in 90 minutes, and headed in to town for lunch.
The closest town is Custer, SD. It's very definitely a tourist town - the buildings all have those Wild West Saloon-type rooflines. We would have like to have tried a quaint little themed restaurant or something, but we didn't have a lot of time to spare before our tour. So, we went to Dairy Queen.
After a quick burger lunch, we headed back to the cave for our tour. We were there in plenty of time, so we took the opportunity to take pictures.
The inside of the cave is always 49º, so they warn you to wear a jacket.
Sturdy shoes...
No canes, tripods, large bags, animals or strollers allowed
Brave chipmunk right before the Visitor Centre
We went inside and reported for our tour. The tickets had the usual warnings printed on them: "...not recommended for anyone who has experienced a recent illness or hospitalization, or anyone with heart or respiratory problems, difficulty in walking, claustrophobia, or other physical limitations." Do you see anything on that list about fear of walking over grates? Me either.....
So we had our jackets on, we knew there were 700+ stairs to go up and down, and we had a camera but no bags. We were ready to go. Our guide led us to an elevator and we went down some 220 feet. When we got out of the elevator airlock area, you won't believe what I saw.
Oh grate! (again)
There was no avoiding these grates like I could at the Okaloosa Pier. The expanded metal walkways went throughout the entire tour. They had platforms, bridges and walkways and over 700 stairs made from the expanded metal. Now, I have always known that I have an irrational fear of walking over grates. However, I was about to find out how strong that fear was!
Dan took all the pictures because I was shaking too much. Half way through the tour I ended up taking my jackets off because I was actually sweating. At 49º!!! Stupid phobia. I tried not to let it ruin my tour though because I was really interested in seeing the cave! The "jewels" are not actually valuable. They are mostly just basic calcite mineral formations. Most of them are found in about a 6" seam throughout the cave. And a layer of manganese covers them, so some places look very dirty.
Some of the stairs
I thought this formation looked like Davey Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean
The Bacon Room - it was a formation that had a little iron in it and it seriously looked like a 20' long strip of bacon!
After walking about 75 minutes, through about ½ mile of the cave we were finally finished the tour. I was shaking like a leaf and so we went outside to try to get me settled down. One of the fun things they have to do there is a little "test" to see if you could go on one of the Spelunking Tours.
So I figured, What the heck?
"Uh oh" I started to realize that my chest was not gonna make it through!!
So I had to take the Squirm of Shame and back out!
Back to Custer. They have a Flintstones Village there in the summertime, but it was closed when we were there. Just a few miles outside of Custer you come across a massive carving-in-progress, Crazy Horse.
Eventually, it will look like this.
They wanted $10/person admission and Dan didn't want to pay it! So that's as close as we got. It was fine with me, I've seen it before years ago. It's made progress since then and that was all I was really interested in was seeing the difference from the last time I saw it. So we continued on...
Well, you can't come all the way to the Black Hills and not see these guys!! Again, Dan just wanted to see the monument, he didn't want to pay for parking! So we pulled over to the side of the road at a pullout to take these photos.
It was only 3:30 so we decided not to stay in Rapid City like we had planned. We stopped for gas ($2.919/gallon) and another shotglass for my collection. And then we moved on.
Of course we started seeing billboards for Wall Drug Store.
And after seeing probably 100 signs advertising Wall Drug Store, we just cruised right on past town.
We got to Pierre, SD at dusk and decided to stop for the night. We had been so happy with the Comfort Inn last night that we decided to try another tonight. And we were even happier with it! Once again Dan qualified for the government/military rate which was only $75 And you will not believe the room we got!!
This cracked us up! A rag provided to clean our guns or boots!
I was still feeling shaky from the cave, so I sent Dan out for fast food. He stopped at a Taco Bell or something and got us a Taco Salad and some enchiladas. And then we soaked in the jacuzzi tub!
maybe it's just me, but i see a hidden mickey in there!! the left ear is kinda messed up, but when i looked real fast, i did see mickey. (maybe it's just me...disney on the brain...)
We were up and at 'em bright and early -- we ate breakfast and had the van loaded by 7:20. Last night Dan & I had emptied out the van because I had to take stock of all the things we had bought. Today we were crossing the border and I had to know how much we had spent so I could make a claim properly.
Our odometer said 81038 km. So we put on 897 km (538 miles). It was 50º.
Dan in the coonskin hat that he just HAD to get in South Dakota.
We reached the state line between North and South Dak's at 9:45. Shortly after we passed a sign indicating Lawrence Welk's birth place just to the left.
We filled up with gas just north of Bismarck, ND at 11:00. For the first time in a very long time we paid over $3 a gallon: $3.099/gallon. Darn it - we're getting closer to Canadian prices already.
Lots of pelicans
I just really liked the look of the sky
We noticed the leaves starting to change colour now.
We got to Minot a few minutes past noon. So we decided to stop. We took an exit that led us to basically nothing as far as food was concerned. Finally we spotted a Perkins Restaurant just off to the left. We can eat at Perkins anytime since there's a half dozen in Winnipeg, but we figured we may as well stop there because we couldn't see any place else. And we had such terrible service and food that we should've left and pushed on.
Oh well. We managed to eat enough to stop the hunger pangs and off we went. There was a little town called Bottineau which was very near our turn to go to Canada, and it had a Dairy Queen. Well. Since lunch had been a disappointment we pulled in for a little dessert.
This was a sign in the ditch!
We were coming into Canada via the International Peace Garden.
We bought our day pass and parked. Then we headed to the gardens. Even though it is very late in the season, they are still lovely.
Making a snap dragon snap
The water feature indicating the border
And the red line indicating the border in another area.
We made our way over to the World Trade Centre monument.
They have 12 beams that were taken from Ground Zero and placed here. It's a very solemn place to be. I can't even imagine what actually being at Ground Zero must feel like!
Then we walked to the end of the garden toward the Peace Towers
These actually have nothing to do with September 11th or the World Trade Centre, although they do bear a bit of a resemblance from a distance.
We decided that it was time to quit putting off the end of our vacation and cross the border.
So we drove up to Customs, answered a couple of questions and were admitted back in.
We crossed the border at 3:45. I texted the kids to let them know we were back in the country and to see if we needed to pick up some milk or anything on our way home.
And basically, that's it. I fell asleep again and didn't wake up until we hit some road construction. Then it was only another 45 minutes or so to Winnipeg. We were pretty happy to get out of the van and know we weren't going to be climbing into it again the next morning! Oh, the kids were so happy to see us, that neither one was home.
So. There you have it. One really long road trip. We used 802 litres of fuel, or about 212 gallons and we drove approximately 5100 miles. It was a terrific experience! Thanks for reading my trip report and coming along with us!
My goodness Donna, you have been busy with updates in the last day! What an awesome trip you had - I was particularly fascinated by the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore, as we'd really like to see that one day. I've loved reading every bit of your trip report and have certainly seen a lot of America through your eyes and it's helped my geography of the States no end. Thanks so much for sharing this with us.
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So we bought tickets for the next tour in 90 minutes, and headed in to town for lunch.
Half way through the tour I ended up taking my jackets off because I was actually sweating. At 49º!!! 
I started to realize that my chest was not gonna make it through!!
on the jacuzzi!
PassPorter Guide Author
What an awesome trip you had - I was particularly fascinated by the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore, as we'd really like to see that one day. I've loved reading every bit of your trip report and have certainly seen a lot of America through your eyes and it's helped my geography of the States no end. Thanks so much for sharing this with us. 
And great pictures! Thanks so much for sharing your road adventures with us 
Cathy
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