The trip from St. Joseph to Aberdeen is about eight hours by one car. If you need two vehicles to get there, then you better plan a couple of additional hours into your travel itinerary. Our trip involved three automobiles for good measure, but to accurately tell the story, we need to start with the original.

Our trip in Car No. 1 -- Western's 2006 Chrysler 300s started at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Eagle Radio parking lot and ended about 8:15 p.m. by the side of I-29 – approximately 10 miles south of Watertown.

The RPMs on the car dropped to zero as the sun did the same over the horizon, and we coasted to a halt next to two mounds of dirt and an open field – only a cell phone tower blinking in the distance to provide signs of civilization. Prior to Wednesday night, I never had watched the sun set in South Dakota. Hopefully I won't have to do it again.

With Brett Esely – Western's assistant AD – laughing maniacally at the absurdity of it all and Eagle Radio's Bob Orf cursing the car while turning the key every 15 minutes to maintain the faint hope the vehicle would fix itself, we waited an hour for a tow.

Two good ole boys from Watertown showed up with a flat-bed truck and a pickup – one for the Chrysler and another for us. Their hospitality was top notch and came with a hint of that Minnesota/Canada accent – a definite bonus. Not spending the night by the highway, also a plus. Having a three-year old car that just had a checkup breakdown on the land George Custer used to roam, not so much of a positive.

But demonstrating the epitome of what makes small-town America a wonderful place, the tow-truck driver knew a guy who rented out cars, called that man at home and by 10:30 p.m., we were piling into Car No. 2 – a 2002 white Dodge Intrepid.