Day: June 19, 2011

Our next stop on this really long leg of the trip was Mitchell. Katherine had read about this town in the Lonely Planet guide book, and thought it sounded exactly like the kind of place we should be seeing on a roadtrip 😛

It’s famous for a place called the Corn Palace, which is a big building they decorate with corn cobs every year. It goes back to… a long time ago or something, and they have pictures for each year on the walls inside. The changing fashions and vehicles are probably more interesting than the actual decorations. The building itself seems to be used for everything – theatre, basketball, and while we were there it was a giant souvenir shop selling a mixture of Plains Indian crafts and anything and everything to do with corn.

Apart from the weird obsession with corn, Mitchell also has one of the few working drive-in cinemas left in America. We went and saw the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film and really enjoyed the experience. They play loads of old drive-in ads and it feels really retro. I wish they had them in London, but there’s probably just too much light pollution and changeable weather to make it work :-/

Right, nearly at Mount Rushmore!

We decided to break our long drive with a stop off at Madison as the guide book had described it as one of the friendliest cities in America plus it was supposed to be a great place to get “artesan cheese”, yum!

When we arrived we had just missed the farmers market but we hadn’t missed the protestors blowing vuvuzellas in the street protesting over their senator and trying to oust him from office.

We had a lovely wander through the streets passing second-hand clothes shops and hippie new age shops. A lady recommended we walked down to the uni campus which was quite close. The uni buildings were awesome and definitely reminded me of the sort of unis you see in American films.

After a scrummy hot dog and walk along the lake front we headed back into the town. I would have loved to have gone to a uni like this one (The University of Wisconsin) you could have learnt to sail on the lake and gone swimming in the summer and then eaten copious amounts of food in their huge cafeteria.

It must have been wedding season in Madison as we saw five wedding parties whilst we were there. Grey must be the colour du jour for bridesmaids as two of the parties had them in it. Orange was also another bridesmaid colour we saw, I’m definitely glad I didn’t choose that colour as they looked like massive tangerines!

Our plan after leaving Madison was to drive as far as we could before we had to give up and then find a motel for the night. We got as far as a town called Rochester.

The drive to Chicago was mostly through trees and fields – I think we’re a bit early for the endless corn we were expecting. The freeways got a bit crazier the closer we got to the city, so we were glad to get off and find our motel, which has been great. More what I think of as a motel, with cars parked outside the rooms, which have the doors on the outside. They have an awesome dog too, which we have photos of in our room wearing a hat on the beach. Awesome 🙂

We arrived a bit late (even though we hadn’t realised that we’d crossed a time zone and it was actually an hour earlier!) so we headed out to find a supermarket to grab some food. As you can see, Katherine clearly thought this was the best part of the trip so far 😛


There was loads of fresh fruit and veg, including cactus and other unusual stuff, and a lot of it was huge!


Oh, and the weather here has gone crazy. There was an almighty storm the night we arrived and it’s broken the heat wave we were in. Lightning, thunder and buckets of rain were enough to wake us up a few times during the night, and caused a couple of waterfalls from the gutters.

The next day we went into Chicago on the ‘L’, which was interesting – it goes right in amongst the buildings, about 20ft up, and must be a real headache for some apartments! The most interesting thing about the city for us was the architecture. We took a boat tour with a guide explaining how the city had changed and all the interesting stuff about the buildings we were passing. They filmed a lot of the latest Transformers movie there apparently, so we’ll have to see what we recognise.

We also went to Millenium Park, which has a giant chrome bean in it. Officially, it’s called the Cloud Gate. It’s got a big permanent live music venue as well and there were three guys on guitars jamming while we walked through. Then we went up to the Magnificent Mile, which is the main shopping street. ‘Nuff said really – shops are shops wherever you go!

The next day we went to the Adler Planetarium, which was great. The best bits were the two movies we saw, one in 3D and one in a huge domed theatre and narrated by Whoopi Goldberg… or Hoopy Goalberg as Katherine called her. They were just spectacular, showing loads of really interesting stuff.

Later on we decided we’d had enough of walking around, so we went and saw Super 8 at the cinema. I don’t think it’s officially out in the UK until August or something, so that was pretty cool. We really enjoyed it, although I’m not sure if it can live up to the hype I’ve heard about it.

That night we went to Giovani’s which is supposed to be the most famous pizza restaurant in Chicago. Unfortunately, we could only manage a slice each of their SMALLEST deep-dish pizza before giving up and taking the rest away. It was like a 3in tall pie!

Next is the long drive from Chicago to Mount Rushmore, with very little in between!