Okay, here’s the deal–the west side of Minnesota and eastern South Dakota are parts of the country that make you think, why the hell would anyone live here? It’s desolate and flat–at least the parts you can see from the freeway, which is oh, so, straight and mind numbing.
The flat grasslands allow you to see for miles, and miles, the only problem is there’s nothing to see. Except when the sky starts to put on a show, which it did for us. It became a kaleidoscope of swirling grays, threatening a storm that would stretch to eternity, only somehow we avoided the angry wrath of those dark clouds with only a few drops of rain.
Pretty skies, boring road.
Our morning diversion was to pull off into Mitchell, SD to see The Corn Palace. I really had no idea of what to expect, Rance has done a great job of finding the things we need to see during the trip so far. So imagine my surprise to see a building covered in murals and designs entirely comprised of corn. Those wacky mid-westerners!
Corn Palace--now with Segway mural
We went inside, because honestly, I still didn’t know what kind of building it was, to find two lovely ladies manning the entrance. Well, they could not wait to give these two city-folk a lesson in history on The Corn Palace. We learned that the corn is selected and grown each year specifically for the building, that they didn’t have the plans yet for this summer but they should be coming soon. That there’s a huge festival in late summer when the new design goes up and that the Weselyan basketball team plays there. We hear they’re pretty good.
While in Mitchell I stopped at a coffee shop that billed itself as “The World’s Best Coffee House.” I would guess that the proprietors have not traveled much or have a very small world that they live in. They did however, have several bibles just laying around in case I needed some inspiration to get back on the road, I did not. Thankfully, the Doll Museum was closed I wasn’t up for that kind of terror.
We were back on the road in a fitful drive. We’re doing this drive in a car that no longer has a functioning air-conditioner. And though it’s not hot outside the sun is heating us like an easy-bake oven. Rance and I trade off driving duties every 100 miles or so and on this portion of the drive we do it more frequently. It’s crazy how tired you can get not doing a damn thing but driving on a straight road.
Finally, after hours of driving we turn off into The Badlands National Park. South Dakota finally has something to brag about. This place is incredible in its natural beauty and incredible terrain. Looking out at an overlook it’s hard to imagine anyone traversing this area, it’s just simply breathtaking. We drove through the park, oohing and ahhing. . .we saw mountain sheep, and prairie dogs and wild turkeys. And because we are doing this in April–off season–there were hardly any other cars to be seen. At times we felt like we had the entire park to ourselves.
The bad ass badlands.
It's like the Acid War Zone--only there's no lava.
We came to a junction and had a choice to travel out of the park and back up to the free-way or continue on in the park, though we’d be driving on a gravel road. Rance wanted the free-way, I wanted the parkway and since I was driving, I won. Not far from the junction we encountered our first herd of Buffalo. They were right there on the road, but that was only the first. We came upon several more along the drive and enjoyed a fading sun as we drove out of the park. I loved it and felt like South Dakota had redeemed itself, if only a little bit.
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We drove into Rapid City, got a hotel and a dinner which was too long in coming. Rance really wanted to see if we could get to Mt. Rushmore so we could see it lit up at night. So after finishing dinner we hopped in the car to drive the 26 miles to Mt. Rushmore. By this time it was around 8:30 and I joked that wouldn’t it be funny if they turned the lights off at 9pm?
Rance did his best Mario Andretti impersonation up and around the hills towards Mt. Rushmore. We descended into Keystone, SD and as we drove back up the hill towards Mt. Rushmore we saw a glance of the monument lit-up in all it’s glory. We took a bend in the road and the lights went out. It was 9pm. Technically, we did see Rushmore lit up–for about 1/2 a second. We got up to the parking structure and turned around in darkness. We’ll be back in the morning, at least we know how to get there.
