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Further trip reports. Again, in no particular order:

1) Wisconsin is very green, almost an Ireland type of green. And there really are a lot of cows. Drove in a diagonal from Lake Geneva to the MN line by the Twin Cities. Drove past Madison and Eau Claire, but too far away to see if they had a skyline. While Wisconsin has it all over NJ in terms of being much prettier, the cows in NJ make for better milk and the cows themselves are prettier.

I have never seen so many Culvers in my life as I did in Wisconsin. I hate Culvers.

Wisconsin is having a particularly hard time staffing their McDonalds.

2) Minnesota had the worst construction and detours (around the Twin Cities). I could not explore the countryside and did not see many of the lakes, but of the ponds, which perhaps they consider lakes in MN, that I could see from the interstate, surrounded as they were by a combination of marshy plants and sort of northern cypress-looking trees, they were quite pretty. The people seemed to be the least masked of any other place on the trip, although I was only in the small town parts.

There were more dead badgers on the side of MN than in any other state.

3) The outskirts of Fargo make the gas refinery areas of NJ look nice. Downtown Fargo has a surprisingly large number of coffee places and Lutheran churches.

4) Downtown Bismarck has a large number of 60’s bungalow homes and some very modest ones, though in good shape for the most part, right across from the capitol.

5) I was rather disappointed in Wall Drugs. I should have skipped that and gone to the Corn Palace instead.

6) Sioux Falls has a pretty park where their falls are, but the falls themselves are not that big. You can go over them without even really getting a shower out of it.

The city is laid out on a nice grid and had the most down to earth people of the whole trip, although the trendy shopping district street downtown had a few people with blue and pink hair and a new age shop. The one restaurant had really cheap wine. Overall the food was uniformly quite good.

Sioux Falls was the only place on the trip where the “free” breakfast at the hotel was an actual real regular breakfast of the type such places served pre ‘rona.

7) Iowa by far had the most intelligent road signs and road construction areas. Iowa didn’t mess around and barrel off huge sections of road where nothing was taking place. They were generous with their rest areas and signs telling you how many miles to go to the next city.

The capitol dome in Des Moines was very, very gold. It was much nicer than you would expect from Iowa.

I saw far less corn than I expected to. I saw more pheasants than I expected and a shocking dearth of cows.

Davenport’s river area is rather ugly.

Iowa had the worst food and for some reason they seem to be afraid of making real iced tea.

8) Everywhere you looked in Omaha a new huge building was going up.

Omaha has mean birds. They don’t like it when you park under their tree.

9) The traffic and construction in Indianapolis was almost as bad as in the Twin Cities. However, they did seem to have filled their many potholes since the last time I was there.

10) The most interesting store was in Aladdin, Wyoming, population 15 and proud of it. There are more horses than cows in Wyoming.

This Scooters Coffee chain seemed to be big in several states. I never got a chance to try it.

They are had in these states a chain of gas stations called, I kid you not, Kum and Go. I found that rather disturbing.

If you want to see elk, don’t go out west. Go to Pennsylvania.

Thanks for the updated information from your trip. You took every opportunity to enjoy and recall each stop along the way. I’m enjoying your trip reports, believe me.

A side note concerning Wisconsin - while it is known for its cheese industry, Ohio is very big on cheese too. Which is why I visit Grandpa’s Cheese Barn every time I go to Ohio, if not one of the true Amish stores. Grandpa’s is convenient, since it is next to the Fin, Feather, and Fur Outfitters store where one can find all kinds of shooting stuff most of the time.

Sioux Falls was nice, though I opted for a quick dinner at some rather lame chain known as Taco John’s. In hindsight, it was not the wisest choice. Safe, but extremely bland.

Very nice people all over, much like you find any time you leave the big, blue city. Although there are a lot of nice people in those big blue cities too, mostly just wanting to get out.

Staffing at restaurants was a problem in many places. We tried to stop at a local place in Hill City - plenty of empty tables, but insufficient staff. The wait would be over an hour. Ended up at Ruby Tuesday’s in Rapid City (decent food). I guess free government money beats working for many.

You mentioned Culver’s - I had no idea what it was, since they’re not present around my area. Seems, based on their web site, like a “wannabe” Dairy Queen.

Sounds like I didn’t miss anything by skipping Wall Drug. Their billboard budget must be enormous because no mile of I-70 is without a Wall Drug sign. :)

I ended up buying my Badlands Tee Shirt on line after I got home. It’s in the wash now. I would have gotten it at Wall Drug (maybe), but it wasn’t open when I drove by on the way back home.

What follows is my manifesto on the 2022 Q Thread Meet-Up. It is long. I want to get this all on the table and out of the way now and nice and early.

1) To begin, I think we can all agree on one thing: The United States is a very large country. While not the largest in the world in terms of area, in terms of area where it counts— places where one would want to and could go to— it is larger than other very large countries. No offense Canadians, but much of your country is only fit for polar bears. Same for you Russians, but I don’t think there are any of you here to take offense. If you exist, please drop us a line. You are probably quite interesting. Brazilians— you guys have a lot of jungle/rain forest with scary animals, and I have heard rumors of headhunters. But do correct me, as I am curious how many people from other countries are reading this. Chinese- sorry, but I don’t trust that any of you are not CCP.

Since ours is a large country, many people who are part of this thread would have to travel a long distance to get to any meet-up location. Others, not so much. That’s just reality.

2) Sorry, I just don’t see the states on the coasts as a good option due to travel. While I do expect good things in the future in terms of exposure of the deep state, election fraudsters, etc., I just do not see any improvement that would result in airplane travel and car rental prices being affordable a year from now. It’s going to take more time for car rental companies to invest in fleets.

3) Given that there were so many people who indicated 8 months ago that there were planning to go to S.D. and didn’t, I just don’t want to go through the rigamarole of voting on a new place and having the same low attendance next year. I get why the attendance was low this first time around given what we all thought 8 months ago the world would look like now.

4) We don’t know what life will bring. While I do believe the Great Awakening will take place before the next meet-up, we don’t know the level of pain and all the complications this will cause. I expect that many of our friends and relatives who have been drinking the Flavor Aid all these years could suffer some sort of major depression for a period of time and you may feel you cannot take off on a trip and leave them. You might have to check up on them and make sure they eat, shower, and change the kitty litter. You may feel you need a different type of vacation, one that gives you more solitude. You may be too exhausted to put up with many people.

5) Our voting last time around resulted in Branson ending up in 2nd place, followed by St. Louis. I appreciate that Missouri is not a small state and St. Louis is not down the road from Branson, but in the grand scheme of the whole U.S., St. Louis in in Branson’s backyard. Other places that got more than one voter were Oklahoma City and Mammoth Cave. Yes, these are a good five hours or more from Branson, but for some of you who might want to see these places, you might be practically driving right through them on the way to Branson.

The geographic center of the U.S. is Lebanon, Kansas. Nothing is really there. Wichita would be the closest major city. It could be really nice. Omaha was. But Wichita is likely not a place you could convince your family to go to.

Lebanon is practically halfway on a diagonal from Rapid City to Branson.

I think Branson is a good location in that it is on the opposite side of the Lebanon dividing line. Rapid City is a bit north and west and Branson a bit south and east, thus being closer to certain Freepers than was Rapid City.

Branson seems to have a large selection of cabins and vacation condos for those who want to bring the family herd.

6) We can vote this time next year on the 2023 meet-up site. I am hoping that by then that just like Gov. Noem impressed us so much that Rapid City won our first vote, some other governor, AG, state, etc. performs a supreme act of distinction. I also hope conditions will be such that getting a good hotel, flight, car rental package deal will be easy, such that if someplace like Vancouver, Canada is the place that stands out, travel is inexpensive.

7) June was the run-away winner in our last vote for the date of the meeting, so I guess June is a really good month for people. The new federal holiday might through a wrench in the particular weekend in June for the meet-up. We can discuss and vote on this around Labor Day. You need time to feel out the peeps you would be traveling with.

8) We will stick with this warehousing thread for discussion of the meet-up. Changing it would confuse people and people can look back through the past discussion. I posted a manifesto a few months back explaining what I was thinking as far as my “vision” for the meet-up.