The Drive Home: The Corn Palace

The other big event of Day Three was stopping by Mitchell SD to see the Corn Palace. We learned about the Corn Palace from our friend, Rick, who said it was a 'must see'.

The Corn Palace is an entertainment venue whose front is decorated each year with corn cobs specially grown to adorn the Corn Palace. This is how it looks in 2009:

We were fortunate to see the Corn Palace completely decorated, in its full glory, because we may have arrived while they were busy redoing it for the new year.

The corn cobs are cut in half, longwise, and stapled to the front to create the intricate designs. I've built a little montage of the five main panels currently gracing the Corn Palace exterior:


The designs were very topical, since we had just come from Mount Rushmore, had seen the Space Needle in Seattle, and the space shuttle was landing while we were there.

To make things even more perfect, I was able to get this shot of Steve with 'Mr. Corn':

I may be joking around a little, but it was actually a fun stop, and yet another reminder that all of America does not live on the coasts and we are a diverse and interesting country. It is worth noting that a performer coming soon to the Corn Palace was David Cook, the winner of last year's American Idol. He is a great and contemporary performer, I voted for him myself, so the Corn Palace gets some pretty good acts...

The Drive Home: Mount Rushmore

The drive home was a long one -- five days. We planned it so we would get a break on day three, which would be a short day of driving (350 miles) combined with a little sightseeing. Our biggest treat was Mount Rushmore, our first stop on Day Three, just miles from our Fairfield Inn in Rapid City, SD.

We had absolutely beautiful weather, as we did most days of our walkabout, with the exception of severe weather on the drive to Dallas. It was a picture perfect day, as you can see from this traditional shot of Mount Rushmore:


What you can't see in the classic view that we are all used to seeing are the new facilities that have been built-up around this national monument. When I first visited with my family, about 40 years ago, there was nothing much more than a parking lot and a trail through the woods. Now there are multiple buildings designed to frame the monument view, as well as house the gift shop, eating areas, theaters running films on the making of the monument, and an ampitheater. The ampitheater is the viewing area for the evening light show, which we were not able to see. You approach these facilities through this walkway full of pillars and flags:

Gutzon Borglum was the artist who planned and executed Mount Rushmore, and there are numerous homages to him, including this bust sculpted by his son:

I am very glad we took the time to visit Mount Rushmore, even though I was eager to get home. It was a beautiful work of art in a lovely setting, and it gave me energy to continue our long drive to Hudson.

The Drive Home: Devil's Tower

Our journey home is five days long. The first day was the hardest - a very long stretch to arrive late in Bozeman Montana. The second day was also pretty long, but it ended with short side trip to view the United States' first national monument: Devil's Tower in Wyoming.

Steve has wanted to see Devil's Tower since he first watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Apparently, this is the rock that Richard Dreyfuss sculpted out of mashed potatoes. Seeing it in real life, I tried to remember if he simulated the striations on the side using his fork... American Indians had stories that attributed the marks to the claws of a giant bear trying to reach some Indian maidens seeking refuge on the top of the giant rock:

Devil's Tower is about 30 miles off the interstate, and we forgot to check the gas gauge before heading towards it. Without the Garmin telling us the closest gas station, we may have run out of gas. We stopped at a small place with a sign claiming to have gas, but the old pump outside probably hadn't worked for many years. At least we met this friendly dog there:

He watched with interest as I shot pictures of the monument standing on a picnic table, trying to get a view over their fence. They had a 'viewing tower' there, but I would have had to pay them to use it, and I wasn't about to do that. We could have driven closer and probably found a better viewing area (a free one), but we were too worried about running out of gas before we made it back to the interstate and the gas stations the Garmin told us would be there. Next time we will check the gas gauge before heading out onto the backroads!