Filed under: News
Got off to an early start this morning, and made our first stop at the Mitchell Corn Palace. The Corn Palace is basically Mitchell’s civic center/arena which is made interesting by the fact that the outside is decorated with murals made completely with ears of corn. The murals are changed once a year. Why do they change it? I can’t say, I guess they like it better that way. From Mitchell, we headed west on I-90 to Wall Drug, located in tiny Wall, South Dakota. Wall Drug is…an experience. Originally a drug store, still a drug store, partly. It’s the king of all tourist traps. Not one, but TWO animatronic bands. An animatronic T-Rex. A pharmacy museum. A giant jackalope. Knick-knacks, gew-gaws, and every type of souvenir you can imagine are for sale there. Oh, but the ice water’s free and coffee’s 5 cents a mug. After that extravaganza we headed south on dirt roads through the back door of the Badlands National Park. I’d never seen this off-the-beaten path part of the Bandlands and found it to be very isolated and very beautiful. (Plus there’s no gates charging money to see it!) We continued south into the Sioux reservation and eventually found our way to Wounded Knee, where Sitting Bull led the Ghost Dancing Sioux to their final, brutal defeat, now marked by a mass grave. A long drive from there took us to our dinner destination at the Alpine Inn in Hill City South Dakota. I previously dined there about 20 years ago and remembered them having great filet mignon at reasonable prices. My memory was correct. The bacon-wrapped filet’s came in two sizes, 6oz or 9oz, for $8.95 or $10.95 respectively. That included a salad, texas toast, and a potato. The steaks were excellent, as was dessert. We left the Alpine Inn for Mt. Rushmore where we watched as the turned on the lights after dark — an amazing experience. Finally we headed to our rest stop for the evening at the Ponderosa Motor Lodge in Lead.
Tomorrow: Presidents Park, Devils Tower, Petrified Gardens, Enchanted Highway
Notes: I realized that my laptop can actually read the mini-SD card from the camera directly without needing a cable. So, pictures are uploading. For now, no comments and they may not be oriented right, but they’re there.
No Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>