June 12, 2013

Mitchell, South Dakota
Camped at Famil-E-Fun Campground

Our first big stop is planned for western SD, around Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument.  But that's a long way from here, so we tried to find a place to spend a couple of days.  Anna had found the Corn Palace in her search for unusual things to do see assignment.  And Mitchell was almost exactly 1/2 way to our goal.  Plus G needs a solid work day, and there weren't too many distractions in Mitchell.

They have a water tower.

 

Corn decorates everything!

 

Even the radio station.  I do give them credit for snagging the KORN call letters.  I would have thought someone in Iowa would have taken them.

Anna has become the RVer.  She has learned how to set up camp from G and takes pride in her work.  You go girl!

 

 

Way to hook up that sewer hose Anna.

Of course Mitchell is home of the world famous Corn Palace.  It isn't built of corn, but the inside and outside walls are covered with huge murals made of corn and other crop products.  And they are beautiful and amazing, or a-maize-ing.:-)  New murals are made every year and you can look them up on Google, I'm sure.  Here are a few of my own.

 

Being "corn country" means having a more conservative position on GMOs.  So there was a couple of 'educational' endorsements of frankenfood.  It's all in how you look at it, or who pays you.

The other major attraction there is really quite cool.  It's the archeodome--a permanently housed archeological dig of a 1000-year-old Native American village.  They have found tons of artifacts and still have 50 years of digging planned.  Really wild stuff to absorb and imagine life back then.  Wow.

 

Bison bones.  Not found at that site, but still cool.

 

In front of the big dig.

 

Assembling pottery shards.

 

Digging for arrowheads.  Notice Anna's casual foot method.

 

Success.

 

Wild mosaic in the restrooms.

 

Local swallows.

 

After a hard day excavating, a real cream soda is needed.

 

As I said earlier, G has started running with me again.  We suit up for a morning run in the SD countryside.  Dirt roads criss-cross the farming area where the campground is, and they are very far apart.  This would be great if we were distance runners, but we are not.  So we're trotting along this road, and it doesn't feel like we're getting anywhere because the scene never changes.  There are fields on both sides, with a barn about a mile, or 5 miles, away, it's hard to tell.  Then we come across this road off to the right.  We can see the interstate near the other end of it.  So G says, let's go this way.  I think there's another dirt road and we can get back to the campground that way.  I had my doubts because the "road" was fairly overgrown with tall grass.  But I wanted adventure. 

 

 

See, it is a road.  There's the road sign.

 

About half way to the "other dirt road" (which he believed was there in spite of the "no outlet" sign), the tracks disappeared completely and we were just running in tall grass.  Poor Zoe was leaping to get out of it, without success.  And when we stop for a minute, we see ticks running up our legs.  Argh, ticks again!  We have to keep going because it's farther to go back.  At the end of the field there is the highway fence and no road.  But there is dirt on the other side...from the interstate construction.  Luckily no one is around, and we scoot under the fence and spend about 10 minutes picking ticks off of us and poor Zoe.  Then take off for our exit up ahead.  We do end up running on the active exit ramp, but make it home safe.  I do spend another 40 minutes or so combing Zoe and removing ticks.  G doesn't get to navigate again soon.

 

The next day Zoe and I run the other way on the dirt road.  A ways down we catch this fellow's attention and he is not too pleased that we were running by.  He stood up and stared at us the whole time we were within his sight.  I was watching him too, and for any break there may be in the fence.

Not a fan of my running.

 

The campground was called Famil  - E - Fun.  And they gave it their best effort.  There was a pool, a homemade, and quite unique, mini-golf, and a coop full of fancy pigeons.  We even had the requisite robin nest outside our window.  Sweet.

Although the water is only 70 degree, Alex insists it's warm.

 

They do know how to deal with bad children.

 

And don't call it soda, unless it's preceded by "cream".

 

We stayed in Mitchell for 3 nights, so that G could get some real work done. By Saturday morning, I'm ready to go.