15%

day two

The next day we knew that we deserved a break and were looking forward to arriving in South Dakota, the land of tourist traps! Our first stop was some place that claimed to have a cowboy town, live buffalo herds, and animatronic western scenes. It ended up having everything but the live buffalo, but plenty of amazing buffalo pelts. Then we started to see billboards for the Corn Palace.

The Corn Palace is located in the town of Mitchell, South Dakota (which actually is a really cool place, and it even has a little cafe called Mustards Last Stand, ha!). It is surrounded by 80 gift-shops, but once you penetrate through, you come across a Russian style palace covered in corn murals.

As you can see, the murals are made completely out of corn husks. Upon entering we found the work of a local Souix artist Oscar Howe, who was the Corn Palace artist in residence during the 1960's and 70's. His illustration style was so amazing, that we knew we had to find out more about him. Lucky for us there was the Dakota Discovery Museum and Howe Gallery. So we went there next.



The Dakota Discovery Museum was pretty cool and the gallery was amazing. They had not only the work of Oscar Howe, but of Edward Sheriff Curtis and Charles Hargens ,too (whose entire studio was recreated within the gallery). And the best part was the women who ran it was totally awesome. She even gave me a little book of her fiction writing. So we hit the road because Wall Drug was only a couple hundred miles away.



Wall Drug has to be the most amazingly ridiculous place ever to exist in the great 50 states. The story goes that Wall Drug got its fame by offering free ice water to weary travelers. It is located in Wall, South Dakota directly above Badlands National Park. There is really no way to describe this place. And if you haven't "dug it", then I guess there really is no way for you to know. Imagine hundreds of miles of open highway, cattle ranches on either side, adorned with hand painted signs advertising everything from a t-rex, to a travelers chapel, t-shirts, free water, 5cent coffee, useless things, etc. And when you finally come to your destination, being Wall Drug, it is a maze of gift shops, kitch museum-esque displays, old west themed everything, and, you guessed it, animatronic western displays.

It's easy to see how you could get lost in the wonderment of Wall Drug. And that we did. Being one who has a weakness for postcards, I was going crazy! So many hilariously mundane postcards of puppy dogs talking to frogs about their location, buffalo herds, airbrushed wolves, Native American exploitation, galore. And lastly, there were the displays of taxidermed animals dressed in western gear.


Day two turned out to be an Americana overload, and we were happy to finally put it to rest in the serene comforts of the Badlands National Park.