Mitchell, SD.

8/7-8/2007
We camped at Lake Mitchell Campground. It was a small city park, very well taken care of. In fact we spent an extra day there because it was such a pleasant park. The town of Mitchell is big enough to have all you need and small enough to be able to get around in it with no problems. The Corn Palace was first constructed in 1892. The current Corn Palace is the third one and was built in 1921.


This is the front of the building. Every year there is a new theme and the muriel's are changed every year. The material used is corn of course but also, sour dock, milo, rye, and oat heads. The corn is sawed in half and nailed to the building. The other materials are bundled and nailed to the building, also. The cost this year was $130,000.00. As the sign says this years theme is "Salute to Rodeo"

This is around the corner on the right side of the building.

This close up is meant to show how the tie the bundles of material and nail it to the building. The only one I know for sure is the dark brown which is the sour doc.

The above picture is one side of the inside of the Corn Palace. There are more pictures in my picture album of both the Doll Museum and the Corn Palace.

Located in Mitchell, SD. in an English style castle, complete with a moat, turrets, and a drawbridge, this museum houses over 4,000 antique and modern dolls from the early 1800's to modern times. There are also 2,000 ethnic dolls from more than 125 countries.

I really can't make any comment about these pictures other than to say they are all from the Doll Museum in Mitchell, SD. I was very impressed by the displays, only wish I could have used a flash to get better lighting but I understand why they don't allow it. Some of the displays are not well lighted but there were more displays than I could take pictures of any way.

They had all kind of ethnic dolls.

I wish the picture of this display showed up better. There were two displays like this, one above the other. This is only part of the bottom display. These are all dolls of the presidents and first ladies. I know you can recognize some of them like Barbara Bush and Jackie Kennedy.

Badlands National Park

8/5/2007
I am not going to print too many pictures of the Badlands. You can see the rest in my picture album.
This is the view from the visitor center.

There are many board walks in the park which make it easy to walk to good overlooks.

There are also many good viewing overlooks with great scenic views.

There are more bikers here than cars or RVs.

Another walk way. Tomorrow we leave for Mitchel, South Dakota. The home of the Corn Palace.

Wall Drug

8/4/2007

On our way to Badlands National Park we stopped at Wall, South Dakota. It is the home of the famous Wall drug store and the free glass of ice water. This was the weekend of the Sturgis motorcycle rally. On the way there on interstate 90 we passed hundreds of motorcycles on their way to Sturgis. In Wall there was "wall to wall motorcycles." :-)

This is just one of the parking places that was full of motorcycles.

This is the front of the Wall drug store. It has more stores inside than a mall and believe it or not they have a small drug department. All recent pictures are in the South Dakota picture album.

Mt. Rushmore & Needles Highway

8/03/2007
Sorry, this picture is out of order but if I move it you can't click on it to enlarge it. Some how I missed it when I imported all the other pictures. This is on the Needles highway. As you can see it was foggy, it had just rained and was still drizzling.

We are just south of Rapid City, SD at the Rushmore Shadows Resort. We are getting three days of free camping if we listened to their talk trying to sell us a time share. We listened to their two hour talk but were not interested in buying the time share, which we knew at the start we wouldn't. Mt. Rushmore was only about 6 miles down highway 16. The town of Keystone is located just before you enter Mt. Rushmore National Park. They were totally set up for the biker that right now are all over the place. They have a special place for them to park and there were hundreds of them parked there. The National Park Service and the Federal Government now have a way to get a round the Golden Age Pass. They don't charge you to get into the park, they charge you $8.00 to park your vehicle.

This view is from a pull off before you get into the park.

This is at the entrance to the viewing area. They have a restaurant, a book store and they sell a tape you can listen to about the sculpture and of course rest rooms. The visitor center is below the viewing area at the end of this walk. They have two short slide shows, one about Gutzon Borglum and the carving of the mountain and one about the animals in the park.

This is the view at the end of the walk way.

This is further back on the walk way looking through the hall of flags. There is a flag for every state and the date it entered the union and what number it was entering the union. Alabama was twenty second.

These really are not wild mountain sheep like we first though they were because there was about five more on the grounds grazing also.

From Mt.Rushmore we went to see the Crazy Horse carving. However, it had rained the night before and the fog was hanging so low you couldn't see it, so we decided not to go in. We then took a drive on the Needles Highway. It's in Custer State Park so naturally they charged us $5.00 each to drive on it. The above picture is of one of the tunnels on the drive, it is 12 feet high and 8 feet wide. Naturally no RVs are allowed on the road. Our RV is 12 feet 6 inches high and eight and a half feet wide. Might be a little tight. :-)

I know it's hard to see it but the white spot in the middle is a real live wild mountain goat. Sorry that's the best my telephoto lens can do. Tomorrow we are heading for the Wall drug store and the Badlands National Park.