We arrived in Sioux Falls around early evening and loaded into Latitude 44, a cool little bar on the corner of a very narrow flatiron building. After meeting its wonderful owner Cyndey, we bought sandwiches from a pair of disgruntled Subway employees and dined on a rock overlooking the city's esteemed falls.
Aside from the reservoir of plastic pictured above, Falls Park is a beautifully-kept area, complete with a surplus of merry families that may or may not be employed by the state to meander joyously along the walkways with their dogs/toddlers on leashes. The weather simply could not have been more perfect after the tempestuous mixture of heat and storm we'd experienced over the course of the previous two days.
We returned to Latitude 44 around 8:30 and met the bar dog and a surgical tech who immediately declared that I looked like "that one guy in the TV show with the boat... Man, what is that show called?" I feigned ignorance, knowing full well that she was referring to Dawson's Creek, a show which I've avoided since its peak in the 90s precisely because of the people who've told me I look like its star, James Van Der Beek. (I prefer to think that I look like Haley Joel Osment circa The Sixth Sense.) Anyway, the surgical tech proceeded to tell us that the worst part of her job was dealing with a certain anatomical part of aging women. For some reason, Tricia remained uncharmed by this topic of discussion, and we headed over to the stage to set up.
The audience was probably our smallest yet, but it was at least relatively attentive. Cyndey informed us that much of her usual concert-attending crowd was probably at a music festival down in Sioux City, after which she remarked with a disgusted face, "I don't know why the hell anyone would ever want to go to Sioux City." (While driving through it the next morning, Tricia and I turned toward each other and shrugged, each of us quietly wondering how it was any different from the rest of South Dakota.)
I played first, and finally felt comfortable with my songs after having "practiced" the previous two nights. I watched Tricia perform (marvelously) during the first half of her set, and then headed to the back of the bar, where I met Nathan and Jared (who helped me remember his name by discussing the Galleria of Jewelry and the once-overweight Subway guy). They introduced me to Latitude 44's brown bag beer deal, where they sell you a random bottle of beer inside a brown bag for $2, and you have to guess what beer it is before peeking at the label. Since Nathan's was a Howling Wolf beer, and Jared's was a Red Seal, I thought it'd be safe to guess that my beer was the name of an animal with a descriptor preceding it. After a few sips, I confidently declared that mine was a "Stumbling Mastodon IPA," so I was quite disappointed upon removing the bag to find out that my beer was none other than the dully titled "Maibock."
After the show, Cyndey told us that we'd be able to get a discount at a nearby hotel if we told them we had played at Latitude 44. We headed over to the hotel, and alas, there were no vacancies, probably because there was some kind of late-night bags convention for middle-aged men and women just outside of the hotel. We settled for a highway rest stop instead, and we both got a surprisingly rejuvenating night's sleep.
On our way to Lincoln earlier today, we faced some route complications due to some major flooding in southeastern South Dakota and western Iowa.
Oddly enough, there was no detour announced once we hit a roadblock on the main highway, so we navigated a number of gravel backroads and took in some gorgeous pastoral scenery before finding our way across the state border and into Omaha.
In between Omaha and Lincoln, we made a short stop, which we've lovingly chronicled with the photos below.
This is a day early, so I hope you don't mind: Happy 4th of July, everyone. And if you're reading this, happy birthday, Grandma!
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