Badlands Take 1 and Some Silly Stuff

I didn't expect to do much today because I had some college application stuff to finish. I planned on heading straight to La Quinta (no, not a whole lot of character, but there's a water park full of children- at least it's clean and much nicer than Motel 6 at around the same priceline price), but I noticed a few stops along the road.

I wish I could have stopped at the sculpture garden with the "world's largest moose head". I find the number of "world's largest..." out here to be really funny. This sculpture garden was visible from the highway and consisted of really interesting painted things stuck in the ground, and a very large moose head carving. There may have been some pink flamingos in there for good measure. It certainly was interesting, but not really worth a turn-around on the highway.

After a brochure and about two-dozen billboards, I thought the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD might be worth a stop just for the silliness factor. Here is my video from the outside.


No I did not go inside... actually, after all the hype, I discovered (along with a family from Minnesota) that they were, in fact, closed. I realized that many other places were closed too. Then, ding ding ding, what day is it? Sunday. I wonder if South Dakota has blue laws or just unofficial ones for the church-bound.




Here are two photos of the outside of the building. The external shell of the building is indeed made of corn products with possibly some hay thrown in for fun. Interesting concept. I wonder how much maintenance they have to perform every year. I'll bet it's a lot. I think the best thing about this is the statement "world's only...". I really don't believe I expected to see a corn palace elsewhere in the world, or maybe even to see one at all. I'm glad I got to see it. The town was charming too.



Next, I decided to stop at the Ranch Store (see photo above) which had a gazillion signs on the highway. Every 20 feet or so there was another sign for something else they sold. Postage stamps caught my eye. I arrived and discovered they too were closed. The whole area was really dead. This particular store was along the road to Badlands National Park, and I noticed that you could take a road -Route 240- that led through the park and nearly followed along route 90. I thought this was pretty perfect and shouldn't add more than an extra hour and a half to my original drive (5 hours total). I decided to go for it and see the Badlands today. I'm glad I did.


This photo is of the prairie dog statue outside of the Ranch Store. As I was taking the photo of the Ranch Store, this little fella was standing behind me. He's actually not little at all, though it's difficult to tell in the photo. I was sitting in my car and he was towering over.

After these funny little stops, I headed to the Badlands. It was so beautiful even in winter with no sun. I'll tell you all about it in my next entry which I should have up tomorrow sometime with a video and plenty of photos. Good night for now!