From California to Minneapolis: Road trip notes

It's been a year since I moved to Minneapolis from California. Here are some notes and funny incidents from the 2000 mile road trip my husband and I took in 4 days.
From sunny California to snowy Minneapolis, the move could not have been between more drastically different places. As we covered 2000 miles in 4 days, we moved progressively from warm to cool to cold to coldest. We also got to see parts of the country we would never have seen otherwise. Here are some chronicles from the trip.
On the first day we drove through lush California into the arid desert of Nevada. The scenery changed so fast and so dramatically though objectively speaking Nevada has a rugged beauty which is actually quite calming.
We passed a prison in the middle of nowhere in the Nevada desert (pic: below). Outside it was a road sign -- Hitchhiking prohibited. Who's going to be hitchhiking? Escaped convicts?? :-)
Our first stop was Elko, Nevada. It's a town right out the Wild Wild West though we did get some pretty decent Chinese food. Chinese and Indians, can't escape them!
On the second day, we drove through the Mormon capital, Salt Lake City, Utah and the site of the Winter Olympics -- Park City, Utah. It's a very quaint town which reminded us very much of Aspen and Vail (which we visited last Christmas). Ironically, there was a road there named Aspen Way.
Our second night was spent in Casper, Wyoming. Over dinner at Out of the Border, for the first time in my life, I saw a man in a cowboy hat and boots. Couldn't stop staring at him. The night was spent in the most luxurious Holiday Innn Express I've ever seen. It can easily be compared to any 5-star hotel in India. Very strange but totally welcome. We allowed ourselves to sleep in an hour more in the morning. Even the breakfast booth had it's own flat screen LCD TV. We also filled gas for $1.63 :-)
The third day was the longest day of our life. We cut across Wyoming and part of South Dakota. I'm not kidding when I say that Wyoming looks like the surface of Mars. It's red, it's barren and there's absolutely NO glimpse of life, for hundreds of miles on end. I do not envy my husband for having to drive through this state.
Our third stop was Rapid City, South Dakota. We're so used to associating America with the likes of New York and San Francisco and Chicago and Boston that when you experience places like Elko and Rapid City, your senses are jolted. These 'cities' are so rural, the people so simple-minded, the amenities so basic, that time seems to have stood still. The only people who visit Rapid City are visitors to Mount Rushmore. If we had been there a week earlier (as originally planned) we would have hit a blizzard which had cut off the power supply in the city. Can't imagine what it would have looked like then! We went to Mt. Rushmore in the evening and were pretty much the only people there. The monument did not look touristy at all. The Black Hills where it is located are rugged and beautiful and we were greeted by fat and cute mountain goats
Mt Rushmore is pretty awe inspiring and patriotic, well worth the trip. There's a trail that takes you to the very base of the mountain, complete with plaques with notes on each of the president honored above.
We found a TGIF for dinner (God bless the sameness of America) and though the cocktails are pretty bad, the food was pretty darn good.
The next morning, we checked out Badlands National Park, South Dakota's own Grand Canyon -- 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires blended with the largest protected mixed grass prairie in the US. I totally recommend this to anyone driving through SD.
We crossed over to Minnesota and the scene instantly transformed. It was more industrial, more lively, more populated! It's also lush and full of lakes (20,000 actually). And though we enjoyed roughing it out for a while, the sight of downtown Minneapolis was very, very welcome.