Welcome to Iowa!

We set off from St. Charles with Iowa in our sights. We spotted our first windmills of the trip in the northeast part of Missouri and there were no shortage of them throughout all of Iowa.

We are definitely not in the Appalachian mountains anymore!

Our main stop for the day was a little, Dutch town called Pella, Iowa.

It was full of charm!

It had a similar vibe to Stars Hollow from the show Gilmore Girls. So, it goes without saying, that Shannon enjoyed every minute of our time there!

Of course we had to find a playground in town to give the boys a chance to use up some of their energy.

Our hotel for the night was a quick 30-minute drive from Pella. It looked very much like what we thought a hotel from Iowa would look like. Haha! Surrounded by cornfields.

The majority of our time on the road the following day was spent moving north-west through Iowa. Our destination for the day was Sioux Falls, South Dakota!

If it’s possible, the terrain flattened out even more.

One of our favorite games to play was, How many miles away do you think the windmill is?

Our record was 11.5 miles!!!

It’s crazy how far you can see out here!

It was just over a 5 hour drive to Sioux Falls and we chose to stop half way at the Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa.

We ate a quick, picnic lunch before going to the Grotto.

It was a neat stop for sure. The boys loved all the gems that were crafted in to the exhibits.

One of our favorite parts of the drive from the Grotto to Sioux Falls was when our phone alerted us that we had crossed over into Minnesota. That wasn’t in our original plan. I guess it rerouted us when we chose not to drive on an 11 mile stretch of gravel road.

The fact that accidentally driving into Minnesota was one of our favorite parts, should tell you all you need to know about how exciting our drive was. Haha!

We managed to finally make it to South Dakota where, on Interstate 90, the speed limit was 80 miles per hour!! The boys thought that was pretty cool. Up to that point, the most we had seen was 70mph.

Next up is our first multi-day stop.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota!!!