Rapid City June 26

Blog to Alaska: Day 9, Mile 1937

June 26, 2012

Tuesday we left Sioux Falls around 10 AM and arrived Rapid City, SD after 5 PM.  The difference in temperature was dramatic.  Sioux Falls: 75F and Rapid City 111F!    So tonight we are slowly cooling the trailer down from 100+ to a temperature compatible with sleeping. (Wednesday morning: temperatures have cooled to 75F) 

On our way today, we visited the famous Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.  We visited the same exactly 40 years ago when we lived in Chicago and Judy decided that I needed to meet her Family that all lived on the West Coast.  Being in graduate school, we camped many nights during our 3-week trip from Chicago to Spokane, to Seattle, to Klamath Falls to LA to Grand Canyon (no relatives) and then back to Chicago.  I remember we stopped at the Corn Palace but the city was very small.   We stopped, took a picture and left.  Today, we parked the trailer in Mitchell, walked to the Palace, took pictures of the students doing the annual replacement of the corn exterior, watched the propaganda movie and then bought some corn holders for the trailer.  FUN!  Interesting facts about the Palace:  it was designed as a competitive market strategy against Sioux Falls whose corn palace had failed.  Mitchell SD businessmen wanted to make Mitchell the center of South Dakota business.  The Palace was key to attracting farmers to assure them that one could grow corn in the area.  The first Corn Palace was developed in 1892 and from there subsequent palaces were built that were larger and could hold a larger crowd.  John Philip Sousa was brought to the Palace to attract business and trains were scheduled from Chicago so citizens could attend the shows at the Palace.  Since then, a permanent Corn Palace with steel was constructed in the 1920’s and serves as the structure today.  The concept of decorating the palace died during the depression and the Dust Bowl but the Palace was revived during WWII.  Today, the exterior theme of the decorative corn structure is changed annually.  Students apply for the jobs that take all summer to complete the removal and addition of the new design.  100 acres of various colors of corn are grown annually to decorate the Corn Palace.  It takes 275,000 ears of corn sawed in half and nailed to the walls as well as 3000 bushels of rye, oats and sour dock (??) to decorate the Palace.  Inside, the Palace was a large auditorium with a basketball court surrounded by decorative corn motifs.  This year the theme is Saluting Youth Activities.

We headed further West on I-90 and once we crossed the Missouri River, the geography of the land dramatically change−just think of Dancing With Wolves.  Beautiful rolling plains covered with verdant waving grasses and cattle crowding together due to the heat.  We passed the Badlands to our south and continued west as the temperature rose to 111F.  We met another Airstream couple from Washington DC heading to Yellowstone for 2 weeks with their kids at a scenic spot on the interstate.  They had written Yellowstone or Bust on their back window.  They offered their paint stick and we added Alaska or Bust to our back window.

Tomorrow: Mt Rushmore

See you down the road

David and Judy