It was actually about half a travel day since we got a bit further than expected yesterday when we made it to Mitchell, SD. The night in the Cabela's RV lot was a lot quieter than a Walmart or a Flying-J (or the largest state park in Illinois, for that matter) with just few other RVs there. We stopped at the Walmart up the road to pick up some groceries and it was a lot more crowded with overnight parkers. There were even a couple of motorcycles with little pop-up tent trailers.
We couldn't leave Mitchell without stopping to look at the Corn Palace. Ellen was a bit disappointed that it wasn't a building made out of corn, but just a big mural made with corn on the front of the building. We took a quick look inside where they had some historic photos of the earlier versions of the corn palace that were much more elaborate with towers and turrets and the whole building sheathed in corn—they were more interesting and very corny. We actually went downtown to find one of the three coffee cafes that were supposed to be there, hoping to get decent coffee and breakfast. They all existed, but all were closed on Sunday morning. Time to hit the road.
Today's destination was Badlands National Park, the Cedar Pass Campground to be precise. It was about a 200-mile drive on I-90. The drive was one long parade of motorcycles and vehicles trailering motorcycles. There seemed to be nearly as many bikes being trailered as being ridden. I-90 is probably a pretty quiet drive on most Sunday mornings, but not today. Since we were poking along at well under the 75-mph speed limit, the procession continuously thundered by, mostly loud V-twins, mostly Harleys, with only an occasional silent BMW, Honda Goldwing or some other touring bike, nary a sport bike to be seen—no squids in South Dakota, it seems.
The landscape and the parade made for an interesting drive. The highway crossed the Missouri River about a third of the way along and became more rolling and drier as we went west. The corn and bean fields were replaced wheat and hay and sunflowers and sorghum, more cattle, too. We pulled into the campground at about lunchtime, found a powered site and had our lunch at the site's covered picnic table before retreating to the air-conditioned Speedy—it was in the mid-90's out there.
A bit later we rode up to visitor center and to a prairie homestead state historic site just outside the park boundaries. The park visitor center had an open paleontology lab where we chatted with the ranger and several park service paleontologists who were cleaning and reassembling fossils from an active archaeological dig that was in progress right next to the visitor center.
The prairie homestead was an actual homestead farm from the early 1900's that was occupied until the 1940's. It had a sod home, root cellar, barns and chicken coop as well as a couple of resident miniature horses and a sleeping goat. There was also a prairie dog town on the site, populated with unusual white prairie dogs. It was interesting, but hardly worth the $7+tax each to visit.
Tomorrow, we take our pass through the Sturgis Rally on the way to Teddy Roosevelt's place in North Dakota.
Photos....finally
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