The cold drive west

Sunday, October 20th.

Although we got to bed rather late Saturday night our plan was to get up Sunday morning at 9 o'clock to go see Mark play in an intramural soccer turnament. However, Jens had set the alarm clock and by mistake set it for 9pm instead of 9am. We woke up at 10:15 and realized the mistake, at which point it was too late to go to the tournament. This was less than great since Mark had arranged for the team to meet up and drive over to the tournament together -- and we were to give some of the players a ride in the van. Judging by what Mark heard from the rest of the team later on it sounded like the would-be turnout might not have been enough for the team to play anyway, but our sleeping in hadn't helped.

Since it was already too late to make the soccer tournament we all three slept another few hours and then had lunch together in the dorm cafeteria. We then rounded up a small group of Mark's friends -- his roommate Varun and his friends Catherine and J.D. -- and took a group sofa picture together with them. We then said goodbye to them all and headed out on the highway since we wanted to cover some good ground through Minnesota and South Dakota before camping for the night.

After what seemed like endless weaving on and off highway ramps in the city we got on I-35 which we took south until we could get on I-90 west which cuts straight through southern South Dakota. Not far out of the city we stopped for gas and had our first pleasant van-surprise in a while: our gas mileage had rocketed from our recent high of 10.5 m/g to a new high of nearly 15 m/g! We had been doing a good deal of cruise-control interstate driving which naturally accounted for a part of the pleasant increase but we also took it as a sign that our recent $280 repair bill had fixed an actual problem and that by the looks of things we could count on making back a good deal of that amount in saved gas money for the rest of the trip.

Minnesota treated us to chilly and overcast weather for the duration of our drive through the state and the last rays of daylight disappeared just as we crossed the border into South Dakota. Since we were headed for Rapid City clear across to the other side of the state we continued driving throughout the evening and early night. We'd put together some sandwiches in the cafeteria at Mark's dorm earlier in the day which we ate for dinner which meant we didn't have to make a stop for that. Which was good, since the drive through South Dakota went through quite barren land almost entirely void of all the gas stations and fast food restaurants that we've gotten used to seeing every so few miles.

Since it was dark and foggy we weren't able to see if South Dakota was graced with any natural beauty to take the place of the missing roadside service stations. All we could see where the endless billboards advertising motels we couldn't afford and tacky tourist attractions that we didn't want to see. Occasionally we could see sloping hills off to the side of the road, barely visible through the fog. We searched the entire FM band on our radio and only came up with a single station which was manned by an incredibly talkative and boring disc jockey. In between his endless ramblings he played really mellow and spacey world music-inspired electronica. As the fog started to lift around us the blue moonlight revealed a barren lunar landscape to all sides which, accompanied by the eerie music on the radio, made us feel like we were driving through some science-fiction movie and might encounter alien spacecraft at any time.

We didn't, of course. All we encountered were freezing temperatures that made us realized the vital role our van's heater would have played -- if it had worked.

Around 11pm we pulled off the interstate in the small town of Wall to look for a place to park for the night. Behind a gas station we found a small piece of grass between a fence and a ditch where a few cars and an RV were already parked. We parked between them, bundled up in all the clothes we could find and crawled into our sleeping bags and tried hard to fall asleep while we could still feel most of our limbs.