RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA – We had a great day. I woke up on Saturday morning to discover that Pete was driving MARV West on I-90 as he and Adam were collecting statistics on various items passed during the long-ass 600 mile drive. For example, we drank 6 cans of Pepsi, saw 12 windmills, and about 50 billboards for Wall Drugs in the 150 miles from its location. We’ve long said that we’re taking a survey of the freedom movement in america and the guys were taking the survey part literally. Appropriate, since this was the route that Louis & Clark were on when they surveyed the west. We stopped at a very elaborate rest station in South Dakota where they had a display of L&C’s boat. The first sign (photo) we encountered was a stern reminder that the expedition was in fact a military operation by the United States government and the exhibit alluded to how native americans were dealt with:

This was authorized by the then president and slave-owning statist, Thomas Jefferson. He did some good stuff also. Speaking of presidents, the visitor center has floor mats that are very disrespectful to the presidents carved on Mt. Rushmore but I didn’t want to track mud into a government building:

Not wanting to perpetuate the “Cult of the Presidency,” we skipped Mt. Rushmore. It was a long drive so we decided to enjoy other stops along the way. The first was a gas station that sold fireworks and buffalo meat while warning customers, like us, of the impending disaster in the year 2012 and handing out LaRouche magazines. The guys bought some of the latter in the form of jerky and we snacked on it throughout the day.

Later we stopped at another rest station and for some reason decided to explore a hiking trail down the hill. We goofed around and made some videos of the experience. It’s always fun to have opportunities to tell Adam about impending doom so this time it was Sasquatch, lost savage Indians and poisonous rattle snakes.

Wall Drugs was an interesting stop. Adam became more and more excited each time he saw a sign for this business, proving that their advertising works. Basically Wall Drugs is a single store that is made to look like an old Western Town. The crew and I checked it out as you can tell from our photos and videos.

As is often the case we like to end with a public service message: