We enjoyed our stay at Split Rock Creek State Park. The park had completely filled up for Memorial Day weekend. Being the biggest rig in the park, it's tough for us to sneak out of a campground. I bet the other campers were wondering why we were pulling out on the Saturday morning of the holiday weekend. When we were making reservations for this part of the trip back in early March, we were unable to get a site for the whole weekend but could get it through Friday night. Fortunately we had found a site in the town of Mitchell South Dakota that did have availability starting Saturday for five nights which would get us through the holiday and beyond.
Mitchell is about 111 miles west on I-90 and was an easy drive until we got close. For some reason the Garmin RV760 GPS didn’t want us to go through town and instead routed us up and around town along some farm roads that while paved were rather narrow. In any event we made it to a rather crowded campground. The host brought us around to our pull thru full hookup site but it took us right by the crowded playground. I wasn’t positive I wasn’t going to drive over a kid’s bike that was left hazardously close to the road. As we settled in, I suspect most of our neighbors were wondering why we were coming in on the Saturday of the holiday weekend.
Mitchell is a reasonable sized town of 15K people or so. A town this size has multiple grocery shopping options and even a Jeep dealer which should allow me to get some service done that didn’t happen in Sioux Falls at our last stop. Of course the real “draw” for this town (and possibly the only draw) is the one and only Corn Palace. We had heard about this place over the years and kind of have a preconceived idea of what to expect although I hadn’t done any real investigation beforehand. Since it was a pleasant, late afternoon, we drove into town to see what all the buzz was about. We were only able to check out the exterior at this time of day, but the lighting from the low sun was pleasant and there wasn’t much of a crowd.
The 2018 Corn Palace Salute to Military
The Side View
Another Side Shot
I won’t say I was underwhelmed but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I’m not sure why, but I was expecting the place to somehow be constructed of corn! So to find a building that is simply decorated with corn, didn’t fit my expectations. Of course a building constructed of corn would have a very limited lifespan and wouldn’t be very useful beyond the novelty factor, so this was a much more plausible approach. In my prior life, I was an image scientist (or at least that was my job title), so I was able to appreciate the skill it must take to work with the very limited color palette that corn provides but still produce images that look rather impressive from a distance. Even up close, I was rather amazed with the intricacy of the design.
The Namesake of the State
On our first full day here, we were to have a non-rainy day which seems to be a rarity this year. We get the bikes out to ride around Lake Mitchell. It’s not a long ride - about 9 miles. There are portions where they have actual off road trails for mountain biking but with all the rain they have had, at each and every off-road section, we discover muddy or flooded trails so we decide to stick to the roads. There is barely any traffic and at a few points there are even designated paved bike lanes. Lake Mitchell is formed from the spillway placed along Firesteel Creek. With all the rain they have had over the past weeks, the creek was under a flood watch and the water flowing over the spillway was rather impressive. They had some of the better viewing spots roped off due to the high water but I did get some pictures and a video showing the power of water.
Lake Mitchell Spillway at Distance
Spillway Close Up
From the Bridge
Video of Spillway in Action
We did make it back to the Corn Palace while it was open in order to see the inside. The place is normally the basketball court for the local team but during the off-season, it is turned into a corn palace memorabilia store. While not everything being sold had a corn theme, a good 90% of it did. We didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without. There is a video talking about the history of the place and all sorts of photos hanging around the building with one hallway showing the design from each and every year. There are also some of the artwork showing how the designs are created for the workers to the next install. It’s kind of like a giant paint by number design but the paint and brush are replaced by corn cobs and a nail gun. The murals on the inside of the building obviously don’t weather as quickly but the guide did say that they are redone with the same pattern every 8 to 10 years to keep them looking fresh.
The Obligatory Photo
Corn Art Over Stage
We're Heading to Mt Rushmore
Panning for Gold?
Closeup of Grasses
Fairytale Theme Drawings
Overlooking the Gift Shop
Waves of Corn
Corner Shot
We ended up having a rainy night that continued on into Memorial Day itself. This tended to get these weekend (fair weather) campers out of the place rather early and then we nearly had the campground to ourselves. There is a huge Cabela's store in town and we did need to get a few things so we had a rather lazy day of shopping and lunch at a nearby restaurant. On Tuesday, the weather improved by not raining. While investigating our route west of here, I had stumbled upon the South Dakota Tractor Museum in Kimball South Dakota. It wasn’t clear from the aerial whether we would be able to stop here with our motorhome towing the Jeep as we drive by in a few days. It was about 50 miles or so west of us but we seem to be running out of things to see and do in Mitchell for the five nights we are here. So we make a day trip to Kimball to look at old tractors. On our way there, we stop at a rest area on I-90 to eat our lunch and find a geocache. We also find there is a small chapel similar to the one we had just visited in western Minnesota.
Small Chapel in Rest Area
At the tractor museum, there are six buildings on the property and we head into the first one where we are greeted by two volunteers. We have a nice chat with them and the man says he needs to repair a window so he will take us to another building and gives us all sorts of info about the various tractors. We are in charge of turning the lights on and off so they don’t waste electricity. There are definitely some old tractors but most of them are in excellent shape. Having had 2 John Deere tractors over the years, I am a little partial to those. One of the buildings had five of them from the same family - a 430, 530, 630, 730 and 830. There are plenty other brands represented but the Cockshutt was very nicely restored. It probably runs too but would be a shame to get it dirty.
Old Oliver Tractor
John Deere Lineup
Nicely Restored Cockshutt Tractor
Minneapolis-Moline Tricycle Tractor
There are lots of other old things beyond tractors or the implements for them. Several cars are part of the collection. A Model T, a Kaiser with a bison logo and a really nice Austin Healey Sprite that I was tempted to take for a spin. They have a one room schoolhouse that has lots of the old desks and books. Some of the desks looked just like the ones we had at my grade school fifty years ago. I definitely appreciated the old movie theater film projector. I had a coworker back in Rochester that could likely tune this thing back into working order. Possibly the scariest thing there was the ladies electric hair curling machine. It looked more like a torture device.
Model T
One Room Schoolhouse Interior
Love the Kaiser Logo
Nice Wooden Cash Register circa 1910
Austin Healey Sprite
Brenkert Movie Film Projector
South Dakota License Plates Over the Years
Old Washing Machine (like mom had!) and Electric Curling Maching
Painted Horse
The next day was another rainy one so I took the Jeep in for service. We took a drive south of town to Dimock. There is a cheese shop there that had decent reviews. They have just built and moved into a new building. They had lots of cheese samples sitting out and we found a few we really liked. I’m partial to cheese curds and they can be hard to find in much of the country. They have lots to choose from so I get some plain cheddar and some habanero curds. Both were excellent and the hot ones were truly hot. We stopped by the Corn Palace one last time on the way back to camp. They had started to remove some of the dried grasses around the border of one of the murals. Since the materials are natural, they need to put the replacements up when they become available. The ears of corn will take another month or two assuming the farmers get dry enough weather to even plant the fields. We enjoyed our visit to Mitchell but in retrospect, a five night stay was a little more than was needed.
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