Road Trip! (Part 4): South Dakota

After several days visiting friends and family, we drove north from Omaha into South Dakota. I had planned to stop and see Mount Rushmore on the way out west, but little did I know what a road-tripper's wonderland South Dakota would turn out to be.

Hilariously touted inside as the 

"World's Only Corn Palace,"

 because I'm sure others were

 chomping at the bit when this

 idea was stolen from them.

First, there are the oddities. We stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, which is exactly what it sounds like: a giant domed palace-looking structure covered in corn and corn husks. Every year a different theme is chosen, and the façade of the palace is decorated with murals made out of corn that depict said theme. This year, the theme was transportation. There were impressively inlaid corn pictorials of various modes of transportation, such as plane, wagon, train, car, and sadly, even Segway. The Corn Palace has been around since the early 1900s and inside you can see pictures of what it looked like throughout the years. Other than the pictures, the inside houses a concession area and a big gym floor that looks like it could double as stage for plays. At the moment, the gym/stage simply served as a giant gift store. Our stop didn’t take long.

Then, there were landmarks of good ol’ road trip Americana. On our approach to the Black Hills, we made the requisite stop at Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota. What once was a small struggling pharmacy run by a young couple became a bustling hub for road trip activity with one simple promise to weary travelers: Free Ice Water. We started seeing signs for Wall Drug almost as soon as we entered South Dakota on I-90. Promises of fresh donuts and handmade ice cream almost five hours ahead started to work their magic on me. The signs for free ice water just seemed weird. But post-depression South Dakota, was likely dotted with far fewer McDonalds and Exxons. The poor rural community couldn’t prop up a drug store, but as the story goes, the signs for free ice water lured in travelers. Now, the place is a giant mega store of diversions, including a chapel, a museum, a fudge shop, several gift shops, and a cafeteria. Their bison burgers aren’t bad, and the donuts are, in fact, freshly handmade.

The Wall Drug billboards were only the beginning. Signs promising road side diners, mom and pop antique shops, and even free prairie dog sightings (I believe it read something like “See a Prairie Dog for Free…Weeee!”), begged road trippers to spend their money on some recreated version of roadside Americana.

Lastly, and most notably, South Dakota has natural beauty. The rolling plains almost suddenly melt into the Badlands, where miles and miles of rock spires and canyons erupt from the land like a hallucinatory mirage. It was as if the clouds had dripped hot wax from the sky, and before it could spread out, it cooled and turned into rock. The Badlands would be an awesome place to find one of a thousand nooks in the rocks and pitch a tent.

From the Badlands, we quickly began to enter the Black Hills. The landscape was less surrealistic but no less beautiful. We visited Mt. Rushmore, which was actually more impressive than I though it would be. How did they make those eyeballs look so real? We waited until dusk for the lighting ceremony. The ceremony itself was a bit sugary, but the Presidents look statelier lit up at night.

One of many
tourist accommodations

Graves of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane

The next morning we visited Deadwood, an old gold mining town steeped in Wild West history. For those who love the HBO show Deadwood as much as me, expect to be underwhelmed by the town itself. I was warned that the place is mostly a tourist trap filled with sad little casinos, so I was prepared. I also was aware that most of the characters were fictional. The only notable thing in town was the original location of the No. 10 saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed during a game of poker. It sat directly across from the new fake No. 10 Saloon, named identically but with no historical significance whatsoever. While the town itself was underwhelming, I loved the graveyard, which was tucked at the end of the steepest uphill climb I’ve ever attempted. The graveyard overlooks all of Deadwood and houses the gravesite of Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, and the only other real major character on the show buried there, Seth Bullock. Visitors had laid coins and poker chips on Wild Bill's grave in memoriam of his general ability to rule at all things. There were gravesites of others who seemed like they were only loosely connected to characters on the show, but whose place in the history of the real Deadwood was interesting nonetheless. In sum, Deadwood—probably about as cool as a do-it-yourself Wire tour of Baltimore.

I can’t end this post without mentioning the stupid awesome lunch we had at Cheyenne Crossing on the way out of the Black Hills and into Wyoming. It’s a small home-cooking diner, tucked away near Lead, South Dakota at a place actually called Cheyenne Crossing for historical reasons I didn’t have time to figure out. I was too busy destroying a badass Indian Taco and eating the world’s best carrot cake. Seriously, this carrot cake makes me want to slap every person who contends their mother’s carrot cake is the best in the world because they are just lying dirty liars. This cake was so good I kind of wanted to order another piece just so I could make out with it.  

Onward to Wyoming!

The biker rally in nearby Sturgis had just ended