It's Hard to Beat The System

Chicago was fantastic but we had to move on. Thats the theme of this trip, never stay in one place long enough to get attached. So we packed up our bags, checked out and moved out. 

Today's drive was long and boring. We drove first to Madison, WI where we knew there would be places to get a cup of coffee and check the internet. This drive consisted of one long road through almost country. It wasn't QUITE country, just almost country. Basically it was boring. But we soldiered on before reaching Madison.

The streets of Madison are all arranged around the capitol building. It starts off orderly, a single one way street in a square around the building. As you get further and further away from the building it becomes more and more of a mess with streets going every which way. All of them being one way streets as well. We were searching for coffee shops but all we could find were bars. This is the home of University of Wisconsin-Madison, what can you say. We spotted one and immediately parked the car. Internet was in sight, we were going to find a place to sleep tonight. As Ch'nel searched for a hotel I nursed my cup of coffee and eagerly refreshed Twitter and Facebook. Over and over again. I'm really addicted to the internet, it's bad. 

We secured a hotel room, signed off of Twitter and finished up our coffee. We still had another half hour on our meter so we strolled around downtown Madison for awhile. It's a sweet town which houses the state capitol. The capitol building is quite impressive in that it looks at first glance just like the US capitol. We circled around the building and it's impressively manicured lawns, examined the other businesses that the town had to offer and then returned to our car to continue along the way.

Back off into the most boring drive ever we went. It started to get a little more interesting as the landscape began to turn into rolling hills of corn and picturesque farm houses. All of a sudden huge rock formations began to pop up and the corn turned to pine trees. Unexpected, but cool! "Alright" we think "Wisconsin's kind of cool".

Until flashing lights appeared behind us. I checked my spedometer, I was going the speed limit, I hadn't had a drink in 24 hours, all of my lights seemed to be working, what the heck was the problem. We pull over and gathered up our materials and waited for the cop to come tell us what was up. The cops comes up, shows us his badge and identify's himself then tells us we were pulled over for failure to move over a lane in response to an emergency vehicle. What? He laughs and asks if we have that rule in New Jersey. I think long and hard and tell him that no, I really don't think we do, then ask him to explain. Apparently if there is an emergency vehicle in the shoulder with his lights on, you are required to move over to the left lane. The only emergency vehicle I saw, which was this guy, was the police car that was near the off ramp. When I drove by him I simply assumed he was going up the off ramp. That was a $260 assumption. W-T-F. I hate Wisconsin. 

We get back on the road and spend the next half hour trying to figure out what just happened. To look on the bright side, we were running out of conversation topics for the day. This gave us another hour of conversation. 

Eventually we made it to Minneapolis where we checked into our hotel before running out to the Mall of America. It was big, that's for sure...but there really weren't many stores in it. There was a scrapbooking convention, which was awesome to watch. Also an amusement parks with absolutely terrifying rides. I assumed that the park rides in the mall would be fairly tame, but no these were some of the most terrifying roller coasters I've seen. To be fair, all roller coasters terrify me. Also a downer? Despite what D2: The Mighty Ducks tells you...you can't roller blade in the Mall of America. 

The MoA also had a strange breed of people as shoppers. Chiz and I got in the elevator with a young woman and a not so young man and tried to avoid eye contact as best as possible. We failed, and this exchange followed

Girl: This man...this man here just proposed to me

Us: Oh....wow

Chiz: Did you say yes?

Girl: Of course I did!

Me: Congratulations, that's great

Man: Nah, she's just kidding...she's actually my niece

*silence*

Me: Well now this is just awkward

Chiz: yea, for all parties involved

Girl: Haha, that was funny! Let's do that to more people

The Mall of America, everyone. It's filled with crazy. 

Now it's off to bed. We have an early morning tomorrow as we're going to try and get out to Mt. Rushmore. That's about a 9 hour drive, so we need to be fresh. Internet for the next few days is most likely going to be spotty as we're going to be camping. I'll try and update when I can.