Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 14 years and 10 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

We slept in again today which was nice and had breakfast in the hotel. While waiting for our laundry to dry my daughter and I went out to the basketball court and shot hoops for a bit. I also took my disposable camera from the caving trip over to Walgreen’s to have it developed before we left the area. Later that morning we went back to the mall to finish shopping (picking up some things we had seen yesterday).

My daughter really wanted to ride one of the rides at Nickelodeon Universe so we bought some tickets and all rode the Pepsi Orange Streak roller coaster. It’s certainly not the fastest or most awesome roller coaster I’ve been on, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first indoor one I’ve ridden. My daughter enjoyed it so much she went on it a second time, by herself in the front car!

Before we left, I had to find the original home plate location from when The Met was there. Correspondingly, I found the original seat from The Met in the exact location where Harmon Killebrew hit his 520-foot home run in 1967.

With the car re-packed, we checked out of the hotel, picked up my caving photos at Walgreen’s, and then hit the highway. Eschewing the interstate for the more scenic route, we took US and state routes through the county which took us through towns like Mankato, Winnebago, and eventually Blue Earth, the home of Green Giant.

(Blue Earth is also where the western and eastern halves of I-90 were joined in 1978). From there we headed west on the beginning of our back-and-forth jaunt across the lower portion of South Dakota. It started out very flat, but very scenic.

We started seeing the first billboards for Wall Drug (which we plan on stopping at tomorrow), and stopped briefly in Mitchell to see the Corn Palace.

We had dinner at a Ruby Tuesday’s in Mitchell and got back on the highway. Eventually we crossed over into the Mountain time zone and reached our hotel in Oacoma around sunset (around 9:15pm).

Tomorrow we get to see Mount Rushmore.

GPS statistics after Day 5: