We saw the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD this morning. It's only redeeming value is the free admission. It's my opinion that you should scratch it off your bucket list.
. . .so Derek says and I agree. But let me start from the beginning of our day. Let's see, today is Monday, May 23rd. We left Omaha pretty early—before 7:30 AM. We headed north on I-29 and picked up I-90 at Sioux Falls. Once we were on I-90 which runs straight as an arrow across South Dakota, we flew…the speed limit was 75 mph which means we drove at least 80! I drove for a couple of hours. We reached Mitchell around 11:30, the home of the infamous Corn Palace. After a short visit to the palace, we had lunch at Taco John's. We were looking for a Wendy's, but there wasn't one in Mitchell. After lunch, I took the wheel again and we continued to zoom west. It was a beautiful day with big blue skies, fluffy white clouds and plenty of sunshine. I was hoping to see buffalo roaming and antelope playing but all we saw were occasional cows. The landscape here in South Dakota was flat during the first part of the day but turned into rolling hills later on and, of course, spring is here and the hills are covered in soft green. So yummy for the cattle I'm sure. When we got nearer to the western part of the state, we got off of I-90 and headed down toward the Badlands…not too far from Rapid City (not too far being about 80 miles). On route to the Badlands we stopped at a prairie homestead. At the beginning of the 20th century anyone who wanted was given a 160 acre homestead. We took a little tour of an old sod house...a soddy. Very interesting and hard to imagine how tough life was back in those old days. By 1916, many of the homesteaders had given up and moved out, frequently back to where they came from. On the prairie homestead property there were scads of prairie dogs. I always imagined them to be brown critters but they are very light—almost white. The babies (pups, kits?) were a bit darker. They're really cute and although I'm sure they are used to tourists, they don't let you get too close before they disappear into their burrows. They also like to scold intruders.
The Badlands are amazing. Mother Nature has done some of her best work here. The wind and rain has, over the millenniums, carved beautiful formations with spires and pinnacles in creamy shades of beige, taupe, gray, tan, etc….all those warm earth tones. There are plenty of pull-ins where you can stop and walk on a trail to some amazing viewpoint of incredible rock formations or deep canyons. No green until you get to the lower prairie area. There, the little mesas have grassy green tops, not having been eroded into pointy grooved spires yet. There are plenty of birds around and there must be snakes and creepy, crawly creatures too. We saw signs warning us to beware of rattlesnakes. Oddly enough, near one of those trails, there was a little tiny "swampy" spot (yes, this was green) and we could hear frogs croaking.
We made it into Rapid City around 6:30, both us pretty tired, but feeling as if we had a very good day. Tomorrow we will go to see Devil's Tower in Wyoming…not so very far from here. We've pretty much decided to skip Mt. Rushmore this time since we've seen it before, but we don't want to skip Devil's Tower, which we've seen before, because it is SO IMPRESSIVE. After that we'll head northwest and probably cross over the Canadian border day after tomorrow.
Marcella
No comments:
Post a Comment