Day 41 (Down East)
Day 41
August 1, 2006
Custer State Park, SD to Mitchell, SD (325 miles)
After hearing Frank and Emily rave about their walk around Sylvan Lake, Sessy and Elliot said they wanted to walk it, so in spite of the full day of travel ahead of us, we took the time to hike before setting out. They agreed that it was one of the best hiking experiences they could remember.
We learned this morning that Mt. Harney, in the Black Hills, is the highest point in South Dakota and that there is a trail to its top that you can walk up without climbing gear. The hike supposedly takes most people about 6 hours, round trip. Too bad we didn’t allow more time for Custer State Park because we felt as though we were leaving too soon.
This marked our first day of driving home. Although we drove almost 500 miles east across Wyoming the day before yesterday, we were, in our minds, headed toward Mount Rushmore instead of home. Today the primary objective was to put as much of the Great Plains as possible to our west. On our way out of the Black Hills toward Rapid City, we lost about 3,000 feet in elevation, and then continued to descend the rest of the day. We feared that we would be entering a sun-baked plain (yet again). But that wasn’t the case. It was overcast and cool east of the Black Hills and remained that way the whole day. Only two days before it was 110 degrees in central South Dakota as the entire western United States baked under a heat wave. That heat wave was pushed east by a strong cold front which has moved the beastly weather east (to Baltimore and Washington), thank goodness.
The themes of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monument, namely frontiersmen desperate for tourist dollars using their ingenuity to secure them, were repeated today. It seems that South Dakota was so remote and barren that it was (and, apparently, still is) very hard to make an honest living any way other than farming and tourism.
Wall Drug and the Corn Palace are great examples of this necessity-inspired creativity. Both are first-order tourist traps. Wall Drug is best described to East Coasters as South of the Border West. In 1931, during the depths of the Depression, Ted and Dorothy Hustead bought the drugstore on Main Street in Wall, South Dakota. They lived in the back of the store and struggled for five years to make ends meet until Dorothy came up with the idea of putting up a few billboards along Highway 16A as a means of siphoning off some of the tourists (and dollars) traveling back and forth to see Mount Rushmore. The first billboards advertised free ice water. Shortly thereafter they advertised cheap coffee and other loss-leaders to build traffic. Today Wall Drug occupies the whole block and then some, making Wall what it is today. We spent about 2 hours and $75 there ourselves!
About 100 miles east of Wall, a weird feeling came over all of us. We became sluggish and sodden. We felt a bit hot under the collar, too, in spite of the 79 degree temperature. This was not a new feeling to any of us, but it we hadn’t felt it for four weeks. Humidity.
As soon as we felt some humidity, we started seeing corn. Within 50 miles, all we saw was corn. Both sides of I-90 to the north and south horizons and for as far as the eye could see ahead, was corn.
In 1892, Mitchell, South Dakota, was a poor farming community struggling like the rest of the Midwest for an identity and revenue to sustain itself. A group of farmers barrowed from an idea that some folks had in Plankinton, another town a few miles to the west of Mitchell, to build the World’s first and only Grain Palace. Soon the Corn Palace was born. For more than 100 years and now in its fourth location, the Mitchell Corn Palace has drawn the curious from near and far for a peak at a 35-foot-tall, block-square building with all of its exterior walls covered in an intricate mosaic comprised of corn cobs of various types and colors. Each year’s theme is different; for 2006 it’s “Rodeo,” and all of the artwork fits that theme.
The interior of the present-day Corn Palace is a multi-purpose civic center, housing a gift shop that was doing a brisk business while we were there.
The principal advantage of driving across the country on a seven week trip is that you get to see thousands of things that you might never experience otherwise, including, for example, a pop-up/moving van jalopy complete with a Granny’s chair strapped on the back.
August 1, 2006
Custer State Park, SD to Mitchell, SD (325 miles)
After hearing Frank and Emily rave about their walk around Sylvan Lake, Sessy and Elliot said they wanted to walk it, so in spite of the full day of travel ahead of us, we took the time to hike before setting out. They agreed that it was one of the best hiking experiences they could remember.
We learned this morning that Mt. Harney, in the Black Hills, is the highest point in South Dakota and that there is a trail to its top that you can walk up without climbing gear. The hike supposedly takes most people about 6 hours, round trip. Too bad we didn’t allow more time for Custer State Park because we felt as though we were leaving too soon.
This marked our first day of driving home. Although we drove almost 500 miles east across Wyoming the day before yesterday, we were, in our minds, headed toward Mount Rushmore instead of home. Today the primary objective was to put as much of the Great Plains as possible to our west. On our way out of the Black Hills toward Rapid City, we lost about 3,000 feet in elevation, and then continued to descend the rest of the day. We feared that we would be entering a sun-baked plain (yet again). But that wasn’t the case. It was overcast and cool east of the Black Hills and remained that way the whole day. Only two days before it was 110 degrees in central South Dakota as the entire western United States baked under a heat wave. That heat wave was pushed east by a strong cold front which has moved the beastly weather east (to Baltimore and Washington), thank goodness.
The themes of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monument, namely frontiersmen desperate for tourist dollars using their ingenuity to secure them, were repeated today. It seems that South Dakota was so remote and barren that it was (and, apparently, still is) very hard to make an honest living any way other than farming and tourism.
Wall Drug and the Corn Palace are great examples of this necessity-inspired creativity. Both are first-order tourist traps. Wall Drug is best described to East Coasters as South of the Border West. In 1931, during the depths of the Depression, Ted and Dorothy Hustead bought the drugstore on Main Street in Wall, South Dakota. They lived in the back of the store and struggled for five years to make ends meet until Dorothy came up with the idea of putting up a few billboards along Highway 16A as a means of siphoning off some of the tourists (and dollars) traveling back and forth to see Mount Rushmore. The first billboards advertised free ice water. Shortly thereafter they advertised cheap coffee and other loss-leaders to build traffic. Today Wall Drug occupies the whole block and then some, making Wall what it is today. We spent about 2 hours and $75 there ourselves!About 100 miles east of Wall, a weird feeling came over all of us. We became sluggish and sodden. We felt a bit hot under the collar, too, in spite of the 79 degree temperature. This was not a new feeling to any of us, but it we hadn’t felt it for four weeks. Humidity.
As soon as we felt some humidity, we started seeing corn. Within 50 miles, all we saw was corn. Both sides of I-90 to the north and south horizons and for as far as the eye could see ahead, was corn.In 1892, Mitchell, South Dakota, was a poor farming community struggling like the rest of the Midwest for an identity and revenue to sustain itself. A group of farmers barrowed from an idea that some folks had in Plankinton, another town a few miles to the west of Mitchell, to build the World’s first and only Grain Palace. Soon the Corn Palace was born. For more than 100 years and now in its fourth location, the Mitchell Corn Palace has drawn the curious from near and far for a peak at a 35-foot-tall, block-square building with all of its exterior walls covered in an intricate mosaic comprised of corn cobs of various types and colors. Each year’s theme is different; for 2006 it’s “Rodeo,” and all of the artwork fits that theme.
The interior of the present-day Corn Palace is a multi-purpose civic center, housing a gift shop that was doing a brisk business while we were there.The principal advantage of driving across the country on a seven week trip is that you get to see thousands of things that you might never experience otherwise, including, for example, a pop-up/moving van jalopy complete with a Granny’s chair strapped on the back.
posted by Hazzard Family | 19:09
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