A Palace of Corn

“It’s smaller than I imagined,” my roommate announced as we crossed the street to the Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota.

Our first stop post-Iowa was the fabled “Only Corn Palace” in the world.  It seemed our grand adventure had truly begun as we launched into our first entirely new state.  Travel day came in early August after Corn Weekend, and we were bound for Des Moines, Iowa to overnight before traveling onward on Sunday.  We spent a long seven hours packing up the Tin Can for travel that day, berating our lack of preparation the week before and now exhausted for travel day.  Oi, poor choices.

The goal was to travel mostly on the weekends to avoid disrupting work schedules as we quickly learned RV campground check-in times can be quite stringent (understandably). One greenhorn decision in St. Louis, MO left us running the generator to get enough WiFi power to finish out the workday.  That afternoon of sweat-slicked pony-tails answering emails and running conference calls I’d rather not repeat anytime soon!

“Look!”, my bright blue-eyed niece cried with joy from the driver’s seat in the Tin Can as we sojourned in Des Moines.  She had just discovered the switch that deployed the night and solar shades.  What a dream to capture that delight!

Looking back expectantly at the ‘adults’, she toggled the button up and down with radiance. 

Do you see the succulent in the dinosaur planter in the cup holder? I have some odd ‘sticks and bricks’ holdovers that simply won’t be shaken.

Sunday found us on I-90, headed west across the great plains of South Dakota.  State boundaries are somewhat arbitrary we’ve found, in terms of geography.  Eastern South Dakota looks like western Iowa looks like eastern Iowa.  Flat and long and full of corn and soybeans.  

A bright orange sign alerted to a steep descent and soon we crossed the Missouri River, the same river I’ve watched countless times in St. Louis.  The landscape abruptly changed.  Undulating hills, bobbing sunflower fields, and mile after 80 MPH mile of Interstate 90.  Something shifted, something changed.  We weren’t in Iowa anymore. 

Set that cruise control at a solid 70 MPH and settle in.

The miles stretched on and on and on as the interstate roped across the state, conecting Sioux Falls to Rapid City for hundreds miles more of prairie grass.  I later learned why I-90 became so critically important (hint: national missile defense) and of the many settlers drawn by homestead opportunities even as late as the early 1900s.  The cultural mystique stirs my American-mutt heart.  Or maybe that’s the average human inclination?

Somewhere on the endless South Dakota prairie and thorny buffalo grass, my driving sense changed.  We were…exploring?  I had no idea what existed beyond the horizon (probably more really flat I-90 highway), but we were racing after it at a very safe 70 MPH.  Our ‘sticks and bricks’ house was half a country away now, and this was it – time to make the new life work.  And wow, did we have a lot to learn! 

The Corn Palace is constructed from corn varieties and grasses of the Dakotas, newly arranged each year in classical designs.  Constructed some 150-odd years ago, this South Dakotan building remains one of the last remaining examples of prairie tourism-entrepreneurship meant to part East Coasters from their hard earned dollars out in the wild expanse of great American grassland. 

Think Ripley’s Believe It or Not ‘museums’ scattered across cruise ports and vacation spots, but circa 1850s and with at least some artistic expression thrown in.

I tried rustling up pictures from my family’s trip to South Dakota twenty years prior; maybe I’ll check next Corn Weekend.  I still remember the lime green radio lights flashing 3:22AM as we clocked in a driving all-nighter, fueled by my dad’s stubbornness and penchant for honey buns in the middle of the night.

We spent the week at the local KOA campground watching beautiful sunsets, braving 90+ degree heat, and running the pups around the dog park.  Still holding on to some dream of ‘camping’, I insisted on purchasing two packs of firewood to fuel a Wednesday night campfire.  By myself.  Because it was hot.  And Carolyn doesn’t like s’mores.  Or heat.  Did I just mention something about stubbornness?

After the week-long stopover in Mitchell, it was time to hit the road again and continue the drive west.  Up ahead?  Duck and cover from Sturgis, the super-spreader motorcycle event in South Dakota.  We prepped the Tin Can for maximized isolation and set out Saturday morning, a mere 96 minutes behind schedule, bound for more prairie land.