IN Installment #1: Galesburg Loves Compnay

Alright... here is the deal: many of you know I have a Mac, some of you know that I have partitioned the hard drive and have Vista operating on half of the computer.  I mention this only because some of my Indiana pictures are on the Mac side and the rest are on the Vista side.  SO in this first installment of my adventures in IN I will cover the drive home from Trip #1 and the drive to IN from Trip #2.  The rest of both trips will be covered in subsequent posts once I switch my computer over to the other side.  Sorry for the confusion...but I do have to keep you all on your toes...give you that off balance feeling!

Trip #1 was the Birthday Surprise trip from March.  My sister, henceforth refereed to as Chumbles and variations thereof, and I flew home in on our mother's birthday to surprise her.  In order to do this I had to first drive to IN so we could fly out of the Indy Airport.  The drive back to SD from IN was not super eventful...but I do have some highlight pictures:

The above picture is the gas station in Elkhorn, IA.  It is notable because with my trusty USD travel mug I got a full mug of coffee for $00.63!  You can't beat that price--and as far as gas station coffee goes it was actually pretty darn decent! (And yes, I do consider myself an authority on gas station coffee...since moving to SD I have had more than my fair share of gas station coffee).
This picture is actually from Elkhorn, IA as well.  Elkhorn is the home of the Danish Immigrant Museum (picture below) and the Danish Windmill (pictured above).  Unfortunately I did not get to Elkhorn until about an hour after both closed.  I did feel compelled to take pictures as I am Danish.  I very much want to go back and explore more and get in touch with my Danish heritage.  So if anyone if up for a road trip (I think it was about 4 hours from SF) let me know...Elkhorn here I come!!

Trip #2 to IN was last week.  I left the day after finals ended and stayed for a week.  Chumbles decided it would be alright if I brought a friend along for the visit.  So I took my good friend Marigold with me.

Did I mention that Marigold is my lucky Bamboo!  Here she is all buckled up (after all, it is the law) as we are getting ready to leave SF.
Of course, being good Scandinavians we need our coffee.  So here we are after we've gotten the necessary coffee at Starbucks before setting off...last chance for non-gas station coffee...

This is Marigold at a fun little gas station somewhere in IA (I forget exactly where).   I thought the barn with the silo (which is actually the mini-mart) made a good photo op for Marigold.  IN case any of you were worried I did wait until there was no one really around to take Marigold out of the car for the picture.   And yes, I did get gas station coffee there...wasn't that great but the novelty of the barn made up for the lack of real cream (they had a powdered creamer dispenser...made it look like it would be real cream, and the next thing you know you've got sketchy off-white powder dissolving in your coffee).

Those are just some highlights from the various drives.  Sorry they all took place in IA.  But IA is a surprisingly large state.  The drive between Sioux Falls and West Lafayette is about 12 hours, and over half of it occurs in IA.  The big non-IA highlight of the drive for me is always stopping in Galesburg, IL for apple pie at the McDonalds.  I always feel like I should stop in Galesburg because there are a bunch of signs leading up to it that read: "Galesburg Loves Company!"