There Are Too Many Possibilities For Me To Pick The Perfect Corny Headline

We drove across South Dakota and got a little depressed knowing we're wrapping up this fabulous trip.

John said, "We're coming up to a town named Mitchell, let's stop there for the night. Google it and see if there are any good restaurants."

So I googled Mitchell and found Chef Louie's Steakhouse in Mitchell, South Dakota. Of the 29 or so reviews I read, 28 were outstanding. I'm pretty sure a competitor wrote the bad one. 

Like all great steakhouses [see previous post from Omaha] there's a giant cow outside the restaurant. We knew we were in the right place to eat our blues away.

The owner met us at the door and we had a funny conversation while she seated us. She was a Kim Kardashian lookalike--only about my age. Can you imagine? She told us she owns the restaurant and her husband owns the funeral home. Together she said they come in contact with everyone in Mitchell.

Turns out Mitchell is a nice little town. In fact, it was the home of George McGovern and his wife and where he retired post-politics.

The next day we decided to just take it easy and stay another day in Mitchell. We needed a day for r&r…hahaha…this traveling can get tiring.

We went into town and had lunch at a local bar and grill. Did you know South Dakota has an indigenous food like the Philly Cheesesteak or the New Orleans beignets? Well, it does. It's called Chislic. Chislic is cubed meat (usually mutton), marinated, dipped in batter, then deep fried and served on a stick with a generous side of garlic salt for dipping or shaking. Saltine crackers and hot sauce are also part of the presentation. Om nom nom. We split an order and weren't disappointed. When in Rome…

Across from our lunch spot is the famous Corn Palace. The outside of the Corn Palace is brick, glass windows and doors, and everything else is decorated with parts of the corn plant. There are intricate murals on every side of the palace. The exterior is completely redone every year. The murals on the inside, also made of corn, are redone every ten years. The Corn Palace is where the local university and Mitchell high schools play basketball, where they have concerts, graduations, plays, and other community events. It was built in 1892.

The Corn Palace mascot is a giant corn on the cob, named Cornelius (of course). Half a million people visit Mitchell every year to see the Corn Palace and have their pictures taken next to Cornelius.

The only controversy for the corn palace was in 2004 when it received money from Homeland Security.

My favorite part of the CP was walking around the gallery and looking at the pictures taken each year of the exterior. It was fun to see all the different designs.

There's a lot of corn memorabilia you can buy. During the summer months there are exhibits and hands-on displays. You can grind your own corn and take the meal home with you. We bought some popcorn and you know what? It really was the best popcorn I've ever eaten.

I like that Mitchell recognizes and pays tribute to the commodity that's kept its city vibrant.

Mitchell was a nice little oasis and cheered us up.

Kathryn

Mako Sica, AKA The Badlands

If I ever rode through the South Dakota Badlands before I must have been sleeping. It's not something I would forget.

I wasn't prepared for this scenery at all. It's just astounding.

The Badlands cover 244,000 acres. When I tell you there are buttes, and spires sticking up through canyon-like creases you picture something but I guarantee you it's nothing like reality. You can look through these pictures and google "badlands" but still it's not how it looks when you're there. It's eerie and cool and beautiful all at the same time.

We spent the night in the park and the wind was gusting and howling. Poor little Gypsy was just rocking and rolling. I kept thinking about the pioneers who came over the hill and saw this scene and said, "Whoa! Now what?"

A few really fun things…

...There's a whole prairie dog village off a gravel road. There are thousands of acres of holes and tunnels and the little dudes pop their heads up then run across the fields. Cute overload.

…There are areas of
native prairie grasslands that are just exactly the way they were during the days of Little House on the Prairie.

…John is convinced this is where the moon landing was filmed [that's a joke].

…Bighorn sheep climb and run through those caverns like they're on flat ground.

…Porcupines, rattlesnakes, bobcats, ferrets, buffalo are all native to the area. And, did you know that if you shine a light in a ferret's eyes (they're nocturnal) they glow a greenish color?

…The sky goes forever in this wide open space. It's beautiful.

Enjoy the pictures, but make plans to visit.

Every Tourist Needs A Trap

Sixty or more miles before you reach it, you start seeing signs for Wall Drug. Wall Drug Store is probably South Dakota's oldest tourist trap.

In 1931 Dorothy and Ted Hustead bought in the only drugstore in the little town of South Dakota. Ted was a pharmacist from Nebraska and he and Dorothy were newlyweds. Business was really bad until Dorothy came up with the idea to offer free ice water to travelers. The rest, as they say, is history.


Today Wall Drug is more than a pharmacy. There's a mall with a main street built like a western town. Buildings are made of timber from the area and old brick. The street is made of Cheyenne River Rock. There's a western art gallery in the dining room with original oil paintings. A great bookstore with an extensive collection of books on the area. There's a life-sized carving of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made from a 187-year-old cedar tree. There's  an area where you can pan for gold. There are hundreds of historical photos of the area including a whole section of Indian portraits. Then there are the stagecoach replicas, the giant T-Rex, the jackalope, etc. etc.

Wall still gives away 5000 glasses of free ice water every day. And, coffee is 5¢.

Before you turn up your snobby noses, in his 1989 book, The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson wrote, "It's an awful place, one of the world's worst tourist traps, but I loved it and I won't have a word said against it." 

We loved it, too.

Kathryn

Big Heads On A Mountain

I've seen Mount Rushmore once before and this time was just as spectacular.

It took 14 years (1927-1941) to carve the heads of Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, and Lincoln into a mountain.

The sculptor's (Gutzon Borglum) plan was to have not just the heads of W, J, R, and L, but their heads and torsos on the mountain.  Too bad, Borglum died in some unnecessary, elective surgery in Chicago in 1941. The work came to a halt until his son took over. He did some final touch up on the heads and 8 months later declared, "the monument is finished."

Mr. C. was sooooooo excited!!

Once again the National Park Service has done a nice job with an attached museum, boardwalks that wind around the mountain so you can see the carvings from different angles.










Interesting Mount Rushmore facts:

• 400 workers were employed. No one died working on the project.
• It cost $989,992 to create
• There's a cave underneath the heads that was intended to be a vault holding the story of Mount Rushmore, a copy of the constitution, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and more….but it was never finished. The only visitors now are mountain goats
• 90% of the carving was done with dynamite



This is what the mountain looked like before it
was blasted into heads

• George Washington's head is 60 feet long

Kathryn

Still trying to take selfies

Prairie dog on the trail

trail view

I Never Liked Him Anyway

[Editor's Note: Pretend you're reading this post before you read the last one.]

I've had a thing against General George
Armstrong Custer since 1967. There was a one season TV show (back when a season was 17 episodes) called The Legend of Custer that ran that year. It's set some time before his last stand when he was stationed in Kansas.

Unfortunately for me, in this show Custer and I had a similar blond hairstyle. The Indians in the showed called Custer "Yellow Hair". Similar to when the Chatty Kathy doll came out, my brothers decided it would be fun to call me something other than my real name…so, I became Yellow Hair for the next 17 weeks. I hate that Chatty Kathy doll, too.

So back to our trip. After Yellowstone we stopped at the battleground of the Little Big Horn. This is now another National Park. It's also a national cemetery--which neither of us knew.

You really have to be on the Indians' side when you learn about the battle. Custer's mission was to force the Lakota Sioux, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne onto newly set up reservations, so there would be safe passage for gold miners and settlers. Sitting Bull created a loose alliance of the Indian nations to fight back. Crazy Horse and Chief Gall led the Indians in the fight.

The story is more complicated than I knew previously, and spread out over hundreds of acres of land and several days.  A few key points:

• The military scouts were looking for the Indians and the Indians didn't want to be found
• Custer's men grossly underestimated the number of Indians they'd be fighting. Apparently they didn't believe the Indian nations would band together for a common cause
• Custer split up his men into 3 regiments to cover the ground, which also diluted their firepower at any one spot
• Custer's fighting men weren't educated or well trained. There were a lot of alcoholics and men who couldn't find jobs doing anything else. They were not a lean, mean, fighting machine.
• The Indians were highly motivated and determined to fight to the death to defend their land
• Custer's actual fight on last stand hill lasted less than 30 minutes

Long story short, the Indians won. 50% of Custer's men were killed including him and a couple of his brothers.

You can drive around the areas of the battle and there are stops along the way that explain things. You definitely get the sense of what the Indians were fighting for, and how Custer could miscalculate his foe.

Bottomline, Yellow Hair lost the battle. Unfortunately, the Indians lost the war and within 20 years were herded onto reservations.

Gypsy just keeps on truckin'