Jess with the Corn Palace

Honking the horn of the General Lee

July 4

I actually completely forgot today was Independence Day. I only realized it at breakfast when all of the people were wearing flags and red, white and blue - and I thought it was a little weird, until I realized the date.

I woke up this morning to Jess trying to cuddle with me, jokingly. Though, it did seem like our bed was smaller there.

We ran into Jason at breakfast. He was nice and asked how the rest of our night was and asked where we were going next. He's going to Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands today too, so maybe we'll randomly see him again.

Left the motel at 8:15 a.m.-ish and went to the 'famous' Corn Palace that we kept seeing signs for. The outside had 2011 written on two towers and murals of types of transportation. It reminded me of the architecture found in the Red Square or at the Taj Mahal, not that I have been to either of those...yet.

The city of Mitchell, S.D. (pop. 14,000) has commercial strips that vary from Vegas-esque to western-ish. But the town seemed almost deserted, save for a few cars and tourists.

The sky here is so immense. I don't think I have ever seen such a big sky and clouds. You can see the beginning and end of storms, which is really cool.

It rained last night actually after we got out of the hot tub. Today it's cloudy but getting better as we go west.

The fields are flat and pretty and smell like cow poop.

I saw a sign for $6.95 filet mignon. It's "cow country" as Jess put it. And God's country - both with the prevelance of religious and country music on the radio, but also in beauty.

I like the green fields and yellow prairies.

And random signs and attractions - Laura Ingalls Wilder's house, Wall Drug, and we apparently missed a really big skillet somewhere.

We tried to have Adam drive but he made us nervous with backing up. He dinged the car next to us (which can happen to anyone) but then almost hit it while reversing. Jess took over. He should do better on the open road.

Stopped at a place called the Pioneer Auto Exhibition in Murdo, S.D. Jess was intrigued by the General Lee signs, though I had no clue who/what that was. But we decided to stop there.

The admission was $9.50 but the man told us there was also a $1 off coupon. We were still hesitant, so he lowered the price to $4.50.

The western-ish man, white beard with an accent, was nice and then had another man beep the General Lee's horn, which I discovered is the name of the car from Dukes of Hazzard.

Stopping there turned out to be a cool idea. It had items from at least the turn of the 20th century....cars, motorcycles, buttons, Coke bottles, posters, and even whole buildings and lunch boxes that I would have grown up with like from The Dark Crystal and Gremlins.

The car collection, with more than 200 collected over the course of 50 years, was especially impressive, and they had a motorcycle owned by Elvis.

We stopped there for about an hour and enjoyed the 50s style restaurant and adjacent gift shop. Then, we made our way onwards on I-90.