Mitchell, SD is a town that is slightly larger than Amherst, NH. It happens to have a convention center there, called the Corn Palace. Such is the size of South Dakota that a town the size of Amherst can host conventions. But this is the case. The renown of the Corn Palace is such that they even have junk peddlers..er , I mean…souvenir shops across the street from the “Convention Center”. The unique feature of the Corn Palace (and there really is ONLY one) is that the decoration outside the “palace” (and I DO use the word VERY loosely) is (supposed to be) completely done in corn and corn pieces. Since Mitchell is right off the interstate, I asked that we detour into Mitchell to view the wonder that is the Corn Palace. I figured it would be a “drive by”. And BOY, was it ever. Check the photo above to see the glory of the Corn Palace. The only problem was that they weren’t done applying the corn to the building, so there were large plywood gaps in the designs, a feature sure to bring the crowds hustling into Mitchell. Geez, this is the height of tourist season! When were they figuring on getting the façade covered? Sometime as the snow starts to fly in SD? That could be as late as August!!!
From the ridiculous to the sublime. On to Pipestone National Monument, a lovely spot in south western Minnesota. First, a note on how we got here. Usually, we have been relying on Bambi to direct us wherever we wanted to go. I plug in the address, and she tells us how to get there. Such was the case with Pipestone. We left the Interstate as she told us to, and went down some long, funky, VERY rural roads. I must admit, I was getting a bit nervous as time was going on, and we hadn’t reached our destination. We were in podunkville for what seemed like a long time. Finally, we see a sign for the town of Pipestone. Hurray!! Bambi’s right again! Or… maybe not. We went down some streets in this town that the natives probably don’t use, to find ourselves looking at the back of what MIGHT be something Indian. By then, we turned Bambi off. She was recalculating our route WAY too many times. We finally found our way to the front of the monument.
This spot has spiritual meaning to all the Native American tribes. The stone quarried here is used by all American Indian tribes to make pipes. It was understood by all tribes that this spot was sacred, a place where all tribes would set aside differences, and work together to quarry the stone, a beautiful red stone used in their pipes (peace pipes?!). It is soft and easily worked. The quarries for this stone are set in the Minnesota prairie, an area that because of its spiritual significance was never farmed. It always was, and remains, tallgrass prairie. As you walk through this monument you feel the serenity of the place—the blowing grass in the wind, the flowers that punctuate the grassland, and the quiet.
Having read that 15 miles north of here there was a windmill belt across the cornfields, we decided to check it out. We followed the AAA directions, and saw nothing. Ray suggested that we go to the top of the hill to our right. Nothing there, so then we asked Bambi to route us to our destination for the night, Jackson, MN. Bambi suggested a route other than retracing our route to the interstate. It turned out to be a gem of a suggestion. This route took us through cornfields as far as the eye could see, with windmills dotting the horizon all along the way. We saw a car only once in a great while, sometimes a tractor, and once, a horse drawn wagon. Mostly the roads we took were empty. A highlight was a farmer walking through his corn field. Whenever you see a clump of trees in amongst the expansive fields, you can identify a house or group of farm buildings. We went through towns called Jasper, Lake Wilson, and Wilmont, most of whose populations were less than 300. The unbelievable part of this is that this 2 hour ride was through a tiny portion of the beautiful state that is Minnesota. Open skies and rolling farm fields, we’ll be back.
We ended our day at the Jackson, MN KOA where Bambi screwed up again (told us to go right instead of left as the KOA sign on the highway instructed). Oh well, we all make mistakes…
See photos of the day here.
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