Refund Check

Yesterday I got home from work and what was waiting for me in the Post...my State of South Dakota refund check for $15.00. Refund check you might ask...well, it turns out that the South Dakota office of Tourism offers audio tapes and CDs that you can listen to in your car as you are driving the highways and bi-ways of South Dakota. They charge you $20.00 for the set and then refund all but $5.00 when you mail it back to them. It's a brilliant idea and one that I wish more states did. Here's how it works, you stop in at the Lewis and Clark Rest Area--you can see the exhibit complete with Pocahontas. While you are there, you can pick up these recordings. Once you are back on the highway, insert appropriate interstate (there are only two) into your CD player and voila! the South Dakota story unfolds. Complete with history and acted out stories--it was a riot. They also had a specific CD on Western South Dakota and the Badlands. It showed that the people who live there actually like living there (who can imagine?).

Now, Brenda has completed her Ironman, I'm back at work, and life continues post road-trip. I'm so glad I went--it was a great opportunity to do nothing, see a part of the country I haven't seen before, and to spend time with my friend Brenda. What a great way to spend a week in the Summer.

I'll sum it up with a quote from Margaret Mead:

"As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own."