Wall, South Dakota.

WALL DRUG! WALL DRUG! WALL DRUG! Sadly they're closed right now, I'll go in the morning.

510 miles today, about as good as can be expected with the damn trailer. There was a pea-soup fog for the last fifty miles, which scared the crap out of me.

Lots of deer and antelope today. Not really playing. More eating. Or in an unsettling number of cases, being dead. I came across a whole bunch of deer in one spot that had been shot and just left where they fell. Unless there's some legitimate reason that a dumb city kid doesn't know about... someone's an asshole.

I used to divide the country into two parts: the part where billboards have a snazzy slogan, and the part where billboards have directions. I need to add a third part: the part where billboards have directions and they're 200 miles away.

I'm allowing myself one ridiculous roadside-attraction impulse purchase per day. So after three days of travel I am the owner of a pink flocked unicorn, a jackalope, and a Tyrannosaurus bone fragment. Or a rock. It could be that they sold me a rock. I'm kinda going on trust with that one. (The jackalope is real though.)

Today's life lesson: walking around after dark in South Dakota in the winter in a T-shirt is a very bad idea. I was just going about 100 yards, and I'm one of those people who never gets cold and will snowshoe in a tank top, and... HOLD FUCK THAT'S COLD HOLY FUCK. It was like walking on the moon without a spacesuit and about as smart.

This motel room has two beds. I guess that's just what they had? They charged me for a single, so whatever. Every motel so far has put me on the second floor. I think that's standard procedure for women staying alone, because the first floor is more vulnerable or something. And a woman alone, as we all know, is a rarity and a tremendous risk, and has to be treated with much more care than a human alone.

No, no, I shouldn't be bitter about someone trying to help me out, I don't really care which floor I sleep on and I'd rather have my pride offended than have my room broken into. But still.

I don't think I really understood the game "Sam and Max Hit the Road" until now.

Despite filling my iPod for the trip, I've preferred to listen to local radio. It's a much more interesting experience and there's useful road information. And it's culturally enriching! For example, I've learned that people out here really care about high school sports. Seattle radio gives a one-sentence announcement of the state champions each year and that's it; Montana radio contains hours-long in-depth discussions of changes in the Sugar Beeters' coaching staff and how this might affect their octofinals results against the Sheep Herders.

I've also experienced the weird contradiction of Christian radio, which is that it comes off for the most part as being composed of fundamentally sweet and loving people, who are always talking about charitable projects and how God should bless everybody and how much they love their friends and families and neighbors and country. Oh, and they hate gay people. Even when it's couched in "we love gay people, we just want to help them overcome their sin"... it's still really jarring.

There's something really extra-sad about a trailer park with three feet between the trailers when it's in the middle of a gazillion miles of totally empty prairie.