Brown County Fair, Aberdeen, SD, May 18, 2003

Prairie Meadows, Altoona, IA, May 19, 2003

"The Once and Future Sport of Kings"

Having achieved, even if Ted didn't know it, the possibly-to-this-point all time nirvana of McChump road trips with that quick-hitting three day combo of visit to 'Bad Land', choose-your-potato cafe, neon bars and street dance of downtown Miles City, night time near deer collision, the giant parade, Bucking Horse Sale bucking and racing, the 7th Cavalry band, and whatever else we encountered there in the vicinity of Miles City that weekend, time eventually inched forward as it often does, and we reached that point in the story where it became time to ooze on back toward Chicago.

Ooze we did. We were whipped. Not much more story, but some pix.

As you might guess from part 2 back there, there were more eating adventures. One involved an invitation to the big local pancake eating contest ... after I had already eaten a 42 lb house special which it turns out was a pre-req for getting in the contest. "Oh come on hon, ya can do it! The record so far is only six!" (And these pancakes were about the size of medium pizzas.) I declined. Another involved a side trip and stop at an "interesting" restaurant somewhere in Iowa because Ted's girlfriend at the time used to work there when she was in college. Probably shoulda called this series the excellent EATING adventure.