Hours and Hours of Driving to End up in... Murdo, SD

We left our horrible hotel in Madison, Wisconsin as soon as we could this morning. It was not a good night. And we decided to try to drive as much as possible today to eat up some miles. Minnesota and South Dakota are great states, but they are full of farmland and miles and miles of nothingness. We stopped to get gas every time we saw a station because we literally didn't know when we would see another one!

By the way, the one cool thing about our last hotel was that Jackson got his own bed! He loved it and slept on it all night:

Anyway, we left Wisconsin around 8:30 a.m. and got out of the state pretty quick. We got into Minnesota and the sun came out and it turned out to be a great day. But Minnesota actually went by quick, because we never saw a sign, but all of a sudden we were in South Dakota!

Teepee sculpture at a rest stop.

Then, after about 10 hours on the road (Joe drove the whole way - I swear, I offered a lot!), we started looking for a hotel to stay at. As I mentioned, there really isn't much out here, so it was really hard to find a town big enough to even have a hotel, and then hard to find a good one (we didn't want to stay in another bad one, that's for sure!). We saw that there was a Days Inn and a Super 8 in a little town called Murdo, so we pulled in. We pulled up to the Super 8 and right when I was going to go in and reserve a room, my mom called. I had her quickly look up reviews for me, and thank goodness I did - it had terrible reviews!

So, I called the Days Inn and unfortunately, their pet policy is that pets must stay crated at all times, even if you are in the room with them! Not good for us, but when I told them that, they were nice enough to tell us about another hotel across the highway that was comparable in price and had a less strict pet policy. It was called the Landmark Country Inn. I had my mom look up reviews for that one, and they sounded good, so we headed over and checked in.

This place is so surreal. The guy who owns it (or maybe he's the manager, I don't know) stepped right out of the 70's, complete with terrible toupee and cut-off t-shirt. He took careful time with me explaining the room and amenities before checking us in.

We got to the room and couldn't stop laughing. Check out the decor in this room!

Silk bedspreads, tapestries on the walls...

Weird parlor-looking section with magazines and writing desk. Note the area rug and plastic ficus in the corner.

Again, with the tapestries and collection of plates on display.

It seems to be a really clean room, and a nice place. It's actually really awesome. Hilarious, but awesome. There is a cute little sitting area right outside our glass double doors, and our neighbors have been super friendly as they sit in their little sitting area.

I didn't get any sleep at all last night, so I think it's about bed time. Hopefully a good night's sleep is in my future. Please don't let anything ruin this place between now and tomorrow morning!