So we left Austin, MN around 8:30 a.m yesterday. Saw a Hormel plant on the side of the highway but no Spam Museum. We must have missed it. Darn. Our trip today took us from Austin, MN to Rapid City, SD with a detour through the Badlands. We’re now at the Rapid City KOA.

The Corn Palace

Our first stop was in Mitchell, S.D. at The Corn Palace. Free admission. Much of the outside walls, as well as the walls inside, are full of murals made from different colored ears of corn. It kind of reminded me of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when Cameron looks at the impressionist painting and it keeps switching from his face to a closer and closer view of the painting until all you see are the dots in the painting. I imagined a similar scene with me looking at one of these murals, and then at the end, they show a close-up of the kernels of the ears of corn, and then they switch to me putting butter and salt on a piece of corn and eating it.

Crossing the Missouri River

Just as we crossed the Mississippi the evening before, today we crossed the Missouri River in Chamberlain, S.D. If I’m not mistaken, the Missouri is actually longer than the Mississippi but is still a tributary of it.

We both agreed that the Missouri is just as beautiful as the Mississippi. We also had a great view of it, as the road kind of descended upon the bridge crossing.

The Petrified Gardens, the Badlands and Wall Drug on the jump…


The Petrified Gardens

Our next stop was at The Petrified Gardens somewhat near the Badlands in Kadoka, S.D. Five bucks each. Then you walk through the back door and into this field where, basically, they’ve planted a bunch of tree stumps. We immediately started cracking up. Then there were logs with the following signs, which speak for themselves:

Some of the logs were petrified and looked pretty cool, but overall, it was really cheesy. There were also two charts: One following the timeline of the Bible that stretched about 10,000 years to the present day, and another geologic chart that went back millions of years. The charts were side-by-side and somehow I think they were supposed to jibe with one another. They didn’t.

The Badlands

Next up was the Badlands, as we took a detour off Route 90 to go into this national park.

It was so hot; the temperature in our car said 111 at one point, although that’s usually a few degrees too hot. But still. As we were driving in, we were regretting not camping there. By the time we left, we were glad we hadn’t.

The rock formations are awesome. Apparently the entire area used to be under water — this is millions of years ago — and when it dried up, the wind and water eroded the rock away, leaving these large, jagged rock outcroppings with colorful striations stretched across them.

We went for a short hike and walked out among the rocks, which was cool, but it was oppressively hot. On our way out of the park we saw a cool lightning storm ahead of us.

Finally, Wall Drug

For hundreds of miles we had been seeing signs for Wall Drug, some huge store in Wall, S.D. So we felt obliged to stop there, but it was mostly just a tourist trap with aisles upon aisles of knick-knacky things. They also had homemade ice cream there but they didn’t offer free samples so we said forget it. The cafe smelled gross anyway.

So today we’re planning on exploring the Black Hills with Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial and Custer State Park. Then we head west to Cody, Wyo. Tomorrow: Yellowstone.