Sioux Falls to Sturgis

We left the convention center early in the morning and began to drive across South Dakota, which really feels like our first "Western" state.  My hand on the map is pointing steadily farther west, and sometimes it is difficult to believe that we have driven that far.

The countryside becomes hilly and there are very few trees, just endless grassland with grazing cattle.  "O beautiful for spacious skies!"  And we see our first sight of wheat, as well.  "Amber waves of grain."

On this leg of our trip, we have an opportunity to see plenty of "Roadside Attractions," some of them part of the program and some of them stumbled upon by accident.  We spot the Porter Sculpture Park from the highway, bizarre sculptures created by a true eccentric apparently living in an RV next to a power pole out here on the Prairie.

 
Next we stop in Mitchell to visit the Mitchell Corn Palace, which doubles as a concert venue.  Apparently palaces like this one were commonplace in this part of the country in the 1880s, celebrating the fall harvest in general and specifically that crop that is so ubiquitous out here, corn:

The walls on the inside are an interesting patchwork of corn, dark corn and golden corn, laid out in a mosaic pattern.  And yes, you can buy that single cob of corn, buttered, at the snack center.

I spot this unusual mural apparently unconnected with the Corn Palace on a wall of the parking lot and am not sure what it represents - the Arc of the Covenant, I suppose, filled with fresh corn?

Al's Oasis is also out here, advertised by sign after sign, just like "South of the Border" along I-95 in South Carolina.  And Wall Drug competes for nearly as many roadside signs.  Our Surprise and  Delight for the day is a stop at this 1800s Old West Town, where we enjoy strolling back in time and taking photographs.

Out in a field behind the Town was this imposing symbol of the Old West, our first glimpse of a long-horned steer.  We saw sets of horns for sale farther west intended to be mounted on the hood of your car, and thought that it would be interesting to see what they would look like on a Mini.  But not enough to carry through with such a plan on our own little car.

A little farther along, near the entrance to Badlands National Park, we stop at the Prairie Homestead, and see another symbol of the west, popping up their little heads under the cottonwood trees of a genuine homestead from the 1800s that has been restored.  Prairie dogs.  They are everywhere, a large colony of them, and they seem to have a very well-organized social system.

Finally our photo-filled day wraps up with a long drive through the Badlands, which are just incredible, a landscape unlike anything I have ever seen before.  You would think you had landed on another planet driving over and around these rock formations.

As we approach Sturgis, the clouds straight ahead of us grow dark and menacing.  Martha is keeping up with other Mini drivers on Facebook, and some of them start talking about a terrible hail storm unavoidably ahead of us.  One of them posts a picture of his hand holding an egg-sized piece of hail.  Stalled in traffic, many cannot find any shelter.  So we stop to shelter under the interstate with a friend group of motorcyclists for a time, and then decide (like they do) to drive farther west since the storm is moving so slowly.  We pull off into the little town of New Underwood desperate for shelter, not liking to think about what would happen to our convertible top exposed to egg-sized hail.  The only shelter seems to be a car wash, which is packed bumper-to-bumper with Minis.  It begins to rain, and we drive around looking for any kind of shelter in this open country - a bank drive-through? a gas station? - and finally scoot up under  the metal overhang of a garage on a house we think is abandoned.  Just then, the owner comes out the garage door to empty his trash, and we strike up a long conversation with him and his wife, waiting there as the storm approached.  He is the just-retired Public Works Director of the town and we talk about infrastructure and snow removal as only two former municipal employees can do!  "Scoot up a little closer," he says, and we ease forward and backward, inching closer under the overhang. 

The hail never materializes, just wind-blown rain, so we drive off into the darkening South Dakota skies and finally arrive at the Knuckle Saloon, exhausted and hungry.  It was imperative that we arrive for this event because they are giving us our parking passes to Mount Rushmore, which is the Rise and Shine for tomorrow morning.  We are grateful to reach our hotel and we sleep soundly!