Monday, Monday so good to me...

Today was a really good day. We got up and had breakfast and then showered at the campground. We drove a few miles into Mitchell, SD to stop into the “world’s only Corn Palace”. It is a building that is decorated with murals made out of corn and different grains and grasses on both the inside and outside every year. It’s the kind of attraction that is a little bit corny but we like that sort of thing.

After leaving the Corn Palace, we stopped in to the Walmart for a few food items and some bicycle pedals. Somewhere in the 1500+ miles between home and South Dakota, we lost a pedal from Lorelei’s bicycle. Unfortunately there were none at that Walmart so we will be stopping somewhere else.

Next we drove to Pierre, SD which is the capitol of South Dakota. It is located on the Missouri River so you can understand how it might have become the capitol in years past. With the invention of cars and I-90, it became a little town in the middle of nowhere which is exactly how the drive felt. We did get to stop into the Fort Pierre National Grasslands which is more like what Scott and I had pictured this area of the country looking like. Along I-90 it was corn fields until about Mitchell and then it turned to farm after farm with a lot of cows and silos. We both expected the prairie to be brown and much dryer than it has been. We also didn’t expect all of the mosquitoes that we saw in Mitchell. They were worse than North Carolina. It turns out that SD has had about 200% more rainfall over the past 18 months than it normally gets. This has led to population explosions of all animals and lush greens all over South Dakota.

After our visit to Pierre we were hustling to make it to the visitor contact station at Minuteman Missile before it closed at 4:30. We entered Mountain Time on our drive and arrived with 30 minutes to spare. This site is pretty new. It represents the over 450 nuclear missile silos in the west that were used during the cold war with Russia. We watched the video and looked at the exhibits but didn’t have enough time to visit the actual missile silo.

Next we headed into Badlands National Park. We drove to the campground and setup and then cooked dinner. In the national parks there are no power or water hookups so setting up amounts to leveling off and opening windows. We cooked dinner and then ate at the picnic table at our site. We then hiked up to the visitor center and arrived about 10 minutes before they closed. That gave us enough time to go through the exhibits and take a peek in the gift shop. When I plan our trips they are always VERY full. We seem to be getting into full on vacation mode or simply getting tired because we seem to be meandering a little more and more off my schedule. After the visit in the visitor center we climbed among the sandstone peaks and enjoyed the setting sun. About 8:15 we returned to the camper to grab our flashlights and a drink and head up to the amphitheatre and hear a ranger talk about the night sky. It was really cool to see all of the constellations but because the moon is full (or very close to it) we couldn’t see the milky way and all of the other cool things as good as we might have. By 10:30, Luke was too tired to keep his eyes open and we returned to the camper. I can’t wait to try star gazing as we get to some of the other parks in the second week of our trip.