July 28, 2013 – Sioux Falls, SD to Hill City, SD
Sorry for not posting to our Blog last night but we did not have any internet connectivity.
On the morning of July 28th, we were happy to say farewell to Yogi and his pal BooBoo and we thanked them for letting us stay at their Jellystone RV resort in Sioux Falls. It’s not that it wasn’t a nice park, it was. It is just that this is the first campground we’ve stayed at that was packed to capacity. What gives, Sioux Falls is not a major city and there isn’t much around it. The whole state has less than 800K residents and for some reason most of them were at the Jellystone campground. On top of that, it was packed with lots of kids. Ordinarily I love kids – but after 2 hours of the tractor buzzing around the park giving all those kids a ride with Yogi and his sidekick and all the dust it raised, I had had enough.
Our mission on this day was to travel the 375 miles from Sioux Falls to Hill City, SD. Hill City is a small (very small) town that is situated between the Mt. Rushmore National Monument and the Crazy Horse Monument.. As we rolled our out of Sioux Falls all we saw for the next 200 miles was South Dakota prairie – it was filled with wheat, corn – lots of corn, soy beans and some other green stuff.
The first stop we made was in Mitchell, SD. You may have heard of it. President Obama stopped here during the 2012 campaign. If not for that reason then maybe it is because Mitchell is the home of the Corn Palace. For nearly a century the Corn Palace is adorned in elaborate mosaics and displays made entirely from corn. They use all parts of the corn. The corn that they use is in a variety of colors and they also use the husks and the stalks. The Corn Palace is a large exhibition hall that is purely a tourist lure to get folks into the small town of Mitchell. They came up with this idea in 1892. They build the first Corn Palace a block from the current location as an exposition to draw attention to the fertile soil in the region. It actually worked and people did come to the small town. Since the first building was made entirely out of wood and it was adorned with dried corn byproducts and the fire codes weren’t quite what they are today – the fine people of Mitchell decided to build another Corn Palace – the new one replaced the old one in 1905. It was used until 1921, when the fine citizens of Mitchell decided they needed something even grander. So, they built the current building but even then later on they added the elaborate Moorish onion shaped domes to the buildings. As for fire safety, I’m still a little leery. After all, the entire building is sheathed in plywood so that they can staple the corn products to it and then there is all that corn stuff. We actually enjoyed our stop at the corn palace because we learned so much about corn. Did you know that the sweet corn that you buy at the grocery store in the fresh food, canned and frozen vegetable sections only accounts for 1% of the corn that is grown in the US. Popcorn is a different variety and it also accounts for less than 1%. Dent Corn accounts for 98% of the corn grown in the USA. This corn has a multitude of purposes. It is used for silage to feed livestock (primarily cattle and hogs), for making ethanol, and for other industrial purposes. We were shocked at how many different types of products that starches and other chemicals derived from corn wind up in.
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After that we had a rather boring lunch in a small diner there in Mitchell. I guess they put all their effort into decorating that Corn Palace and they don’t have any energy left for cooking a decent meal. Too bad. So, it was time to get back on the road. To help pass the time as we rolled through the desolate prairie, we listened to an e-book. It was Dan Brown’s (Da Vinci Code & Angels and Demons) new thriller “Inferno”. I won’t give it away but it in centered on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The only comment I would make is that like all thrillers, the evil and insane villain feels the need to construct an elaborate puzzle for the hero to crack thereby giving him/her a chance to save the world. I don’t recall Al Qaeda doing that on 9/11. Nevertheless, we did enjoy it. While we were rolling down the road, we did see a large wheat combine hard at work.
Eventually, the prairie gave way and we saw a glimpse of the Badlands. The Badlands National Park was just to the south of us, but parts of it did run up near I-90. It was a little strange to see these rocky outcroppings and valleys appear seemingly out of nowhere. The Badlands stretch into Montana as well. They are some of the oldest rock formations in the region. At one time, the hard rock surface formed on the bottom of a great ocean. As the land rose the rock was eroded over 38 million years to form the strange and eerie landscape. Soon after getting past the Badlands we ran into the Black Hills of South Dakota. These tall mountains rise up from the prairie and soon the landscape is entirely different. Unfortunately, the landscape wasn’t the only thing to change. Suddenly we were driving up the windy mountains roads in the pouring rain. There were a lot of motorcyclists on the road (the annual Sturgis Rally kicks off on Aug 5th) and many of them did not have the good sense to get off of the road when the rain decided to come down. As we were about to turn into our campground, a couple of ambulances raced by us and I couldn’t help thinking that the Sturgis Rally may be short a couple of riders this year. We hope all will be well for them.
Since the rain was pouring down, we quickly set up camp and Elisa made a quick but delicious dinner. We relaxed for the evening watching an old episode of Colombo. Once again, he cracked the case. In this episode, Dabney Coleman played a powerful LA lawyer who is undefeated in winning murder cases. Dabney figures he can stage the perfect murder and get away with it…but Colombo is on the case. Not today!
More later.
Photo 1 – Saying bye to Yogi Bear
Photo 2 – Crossing the Missouri River – I didn’t know that it ran through SD.
Photo 3-7 – the Mitchell Corn Palace
Photo 8 – Wheat Combine
Photo 9 – Rain falling in Rapid City on the way up the Black Hills
Photo 10 – We arrive at our campground in the rain – we are a little worried about our plans for tomorrow.
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