Wall Drug and The Corn Palace

One of the MOST famous places in southern SD is WALL DRUG.  They post signs for maybe a hundred miles to the east and west of their store. Anyone traveling on I-90 through SD has seen the signs. We wanted to go back. 

            The store is HUGE with many sub-parts. You can buy new or used lassoes there, the first I can recall seeing. You can probably buy most anything there. They allegedly had “free coffee and a donut” for veterans, and I was whetting my appetite. However it was near lunch hour and the lines were so long, we didn’t want to delay. We did buy a “Where the Heck is Wall Drug?” bumper sticker for each of our kids, commemorating that first trip.

Near the east side of the state is the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. Early in the 20^th century, two enterprising guys were looking for a way to get more tourists into town. There had been a failed attempt to build a corn museum in Sioux City, IA, so the men said, let’s do it in Mitchell. They promptly raised a bunch of money from local folk, and started it. After a few years, it was so popular, especially for the annual corn festival, it was moved a block south and a MUCH bigger building was constructed, then expanded.

The most noteworthy aspect of the Corn Palace are the huge murals using various colors of corn to make the art. We watched the video about the founding of the corn palace.

A HS sophomore, Jamie, served as our guide for describing the murals. Brenda and I were both impressed with his maturity, so I grabbed a photo with him.

After the Corn Palace, we visited an interesting store across the street. It featured a model of the Jewish tabernacle, supposedly to the right dimensions. It was interesting to see and was built by a 7^th-day Adventist. It wasn’t there 24 years back.  But it was neat.

From here, we merely had to drive home—we still were over 1100 miles from home.