GADT Day 4 - A Monumental Driving Day

First on the plate today was the Corn Palace, but before that we needed breakfast. Driving down Main St. in Mitchell, SD mom noticed a little cafe about two blocks from the Corn Palace. Cafe Teresa turned out to be a lovely little place with great coffee and good simple food. Wifi and a wine bar are things you don't normally associate with a small town diner, but this place manages to pull off a little cosmopolitan flair without sacrificing hometown hospitality.

The world's only Corn Palace turned out to be the town's civic center, home to basketball games, town meetings, concerts and once a year a corn festival. What's so special is that the exterior and much of the interior is covered in corn cob art. These are large murals made from twelve different varieties of corn husks, cut in half and nailed to the walls. The people of Mitchell have been doing this every year since 1892. And they have been taking pictures of the place every year since then.

That's the bulk of what there is to see inside the building and it's more fascinating than it sounds. The pictures aren't just of the building, but also the people of Mitchell as they lived through two world wars, good and bad economic times, and the changing world outside this little town. The artwork swings from patriotic to historic, from mundane to exotic while below them the people and the town change. It's all free and we spent a great hour there looking at the art and chatting with the people.

Now the drive to Mt. Rushmore was a real eye opener for me. I've never driven beyond Iowa before, so I've never seen the real prairie of Laura Ingalls-Wilder. I think what awed me the most was that for three hundred miles we were almost constantly going uphill! I'm used to going up a hill and then going down the other side. Out here you go up, it levels off and then you go up again. It reeked havoc on my gas mileage and at one point I was worried the Prius might run dry.

Those of you from the East Coast will probably be familiar with South of the Border, that icon of tourist traps whose aggressive billboard advertising provides Florida bound travellers along I95 with amusement and frustration. But did you know where Pedro got the idea for all those billboards? From Wall Drug, that's where. Back in 1931 Ted Hustead bought the only drugstore in the little town of Wall, SD. Disappointed at the small number of customers coming in he started putting up amusing signs on all the roads leading into town offering people free ice water if they came to Wall Drug.

Those signs now reach all the way into Iowa and who knows how far in every other direction. Some are funny, some are silly, some are just advertisements, but all of them entice the weary traveller to push on to Wall and experience its now famous drugstore. As with most tourist traps, Wall Drug doesn't live up to the hype, but it was a fun little side trip that doesn't take long. There's plenty to see in this souvenir mini-mall and you'll be hard pressed to walk away without buying something. We bought a Chapstick for mom.

Okay, I'm about to step on some patriotic toes here. We got to Mt. Rushmore, a place I have wanted to see since childhood, and my first impression was... it's smaller than I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing sculpture, but it's just not as grand as movies and pictures led me to believe. It was a beautiful day, with nice puffy clouds in the background and I got some nice photos, visited the gift shop, bought some books and a t-shirt, but on the whole it was a bit of a let down.

On the other hand, about twenty miles away is the Crazy Horse sculpture and this one was actually bigger than I expected. I'd been warned away from going inside the park, they charge $10 a head and you can't see anything inside that you can't see from the road. We pulled off and I pulled out the binoculars. If this thing ever gets completed it will really be a wonder. Only the face seems to be completed and there didn't seem to be any work going on. Should they have blasted away the natural wonders to replace them with man-made wonders? I don't know, but at least I have a t-shirt!

After leaving the monuments area we headed down US 385 towards Nebraska. We had no idea how far we'd get, but wanted to have a short a drive on Thursday as possible. I ended up driving all the way to Cheyenne, WY, pulling in at 9:30 pm Mountain Time -- a thirteen hour day.

Day 4 mileage: 637

GADT Day 3 - Rainy Days and Tuesdays

The day started out with the promise of rain showers all day and delivered on that promise before we could even finish our breakfast. We headed west across Iowa under gray skies and drove through alternately light and heavy showers all morning long. Rather than stop for lunch, mom wanted to stop somewhere to get some fruit and maybe a heavier jacket than the one she'd brought with her.

We were able to accomplish both when I found a Super Target near Des Moines, IA. We don't have these in Maryland yet, so it was interesting just to see Target's answer to the Wal-Mart all in one stores. We got some bananas, dried fruit, and yogurt drinks before heading over to the other side of the store to look at jackets. Someone needs to explain to the garment workers in Vietnam that XXL is supposed to be larger than XL not smaller. In spite of the sizing confusion, mom found herself a very nice jacket that fit and was even on sale.

I spent most of the day playing with the GPS on the Prius, finding new ways to display the maps and POIs that I hadn't had time to figure out before. Meanwhile mom studied her map book. There just wasn't much to see outside the windows except rain and corn. One thing I did notice is that the 21st century is coming to the corn belt as witnessed by free wifi at all the rest stops in Iowa. Now who would have guessed that?

The western border of Iowa is defined by a series of hills that were once wind blown sand dunes in the last ice age. Now known as the Loess Hills, they extend from Sioux City, IA down to St. Joesph, MO. They rise over sixty feet above the otherwise flat prairie, are about fifteen miles wide and run for over two hundred miles. Coming from the east the hills begin gradually, but along the western edge they drop off dramatically. As we were driving over this final hill we spotted a sign for a scenic overlook and decided to check it out.

By this time the rain clouds had been replaced by blue skies with thousands of puffy little clouds. The overlook consisted of a small concrete building and a tall wooden tower. I managed to climb all but the last level of the tower before the high winds spooked me, but the view was still amazing. You could easily see twenty miles in any direction and the scenery was awe inspiring.

When I finally caved into mom's insistent cries for me to come down, we walked over to the small building to use the facilities. While we were standing there a man in a dark sweatshirt came out and gave me a pamphlet about the Loess Hills. He seemed to be a fountain of facts about them too. We talked with him for twenty minutes before we realized that under the sweatshirt he was wearing a uniform and that he was in fact the caretaker for the park. Bernie Lee is one of two men who come up to the overlook every day and tend to visitor's needs.

We told him where we were coming from and where we were going to. He told us more about the Loess Hills and the valley beyond. He told us about the birds that used to nest at the top of the tower and how they ran them off only to have the birds replaced by wasps. (I was then glad I didn't go all the way to the top level!) At one point he went to his car and gave us an autographed copy of his wife's book.

"Tales of Tails" is a small book of true anecdotes about people's pets and other animals they've met. Compiled by AnnJeanette Lee, the book is filled with charming illustrations by Eldon Riesgaard and no single story is more than a few pages long. Mom started reading a few of the stories aloud in the car and we were entertained by them for hours. I would recommend the book to anyone with small children, but grown-ups will certainly enjoy it too.

We ended our journey today in Mitchell, SD, home of the world's one and only Corn Palace. I have no real idea what this is, but mom's been wanting to find out for five years ever since she and a friend came here only to find the place closed. We also got here too late to see the Palace today as well, but decided to spend the night and go find out what it's all about first thing in the morning.

Day 3 mileage: 532