2 Inch Parking & A Funny Story!

The day was glorious weather: sunny, not hot, and not windy. Thankful! We said goodbye to Black Hills, South Dakota, as we probably won’t see many hills like that for quite a while. 🙂 The Great Plains stretched out in front of us. At one point, it looks like a man-made hill for the water tower to be on. Made us giggle. The landscape is pretty with a few spread out hills. We still have to do a double-take when we see cattle because we always say, “Oh, look at those bison” and they are cows. But yesterday when I said that, we both did a double-double-take and it was indeed bison along Hwy 79! So funny. 

I read out loud “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. This is my 3rd time reading it and Kevin’s first. He really liked it. At one point we crossed a huge river. We didn’t see a sign for it but noticed it was big. Then we saw a sign to Dignity: of Earth & Sky. I knew about this 50 ft statue from RV Quilters. It is a very popular stop for them. I had it on my Places To Go document but thought it was a long ways from here. Seeing the sign I thought it was just a turn off like Salt Lake City to Las Vegas signs. Next we look over to the side and we see the statue! Oh we must stop. There was plenty of parking, sort of a rest area plus a Lewis & Clark something or other there. We walked to the statue and it was neat to see so many people there. It was hard to get a picture without someone in it but everyone took turns to have their picture taken in front of the statue. People would take pictures for you and then you for them.  Dignity is beautiful! More so than I would have ever thought. The quilted quilt she has on her back is a large star pattern. The model was taken from 3 local ladies. We were so glad we stopped there.

We got to Mitchell, South Dakota, at 1:00pm (crossed into Central Time Zone earlier) and went directly to Dakota Campground. The office looked like an old KOA campground with it’s A-frame office but the guy told Kevin that the people who first built this campground also had a KOA built. They just used the plans for the office from that one. HA He also told Kevin this is his last weekend because they have sold the place. He was ready to retire. Good for him. It is a smaller campground with lots of full grown trees offering great shade. Gravel roads and site, with grass, full hookups including 50 amp and a picnic table. 

We unhooked quickly and then drove to Corn Palace. It was fun to see there was a festival there. They had the full carnival with all sorts of rides and lots of vendor food booths. We saw the outside of Corn Palace and walked around to the side. 

There we saw, part of the festival, was a toy riding tractor with little pedals pulling along a trailer and as a kid pedaled, a weighted block would ride up the trailer – a real tractor pull! It was so cute and we sat for the awhile to watch. Kevin wanted to see a tractor pull and he got one! 🙂 

Inside we saw there is a smallest arena; tonight there was going to be a 80s rock concert and the band was setting up on stage. The arena just has seats on one side, around a basketball looking court. Around the edges of the arena are big signs with information about the Corn Palaces from the 1800s and we read some of them. They used to be completely covered in corn around the outside but now there are just panels of pictures made out of corn. It was fun to see because 1. We both have been here before as youngsters and we wanted to see the changes and 2. Kevin’s grandparents took a trip here many years ago. OH, they are so excited – the highlight of their lives, Kevin remembers. This is the trip they always talked about. Isn’t that sweet to be here? We walked up and down the midway just watching but didn’t want to ride anything. I saw there was a museum of the area but it was closed on the weekends. After that we headed home (footnote 1). The campground really filled up and lots of people were outside enjoying the evening. Quite a few were cooking outside. We walked around the campground, took pictures of the sun setting into the prairie, relaxed, and then went to bed.

The next day we traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota. In Mankato we saw this beautiful painting on some silos. https://www.cityartmankato.com/tours/silo-art/

FUNNY STORY: We got all settled in at Lebanon Hills Regional Park Campground. Kevin said he wanted to get something for dinner so we went to Taco Bell and got food to take home to eat. Literally as the guy was handing us our food at Taco Bell, I remembered my extreme excitement, my “hallelujah” moment…when the other day I looked up my most favorite place to eat in this entire ball floating through space and discovered on the front page of the website that they had just opened a Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill in Minneapolis! I turned to Kevin and I said (direct quote here) “Aggggh, I am going to swear now….damn rascal! I forgot about Costa Vida here.” HAHAHAHA 

Do you remember reading in a past blog post about Lewis & Clark knowing they were getting close to the ocean when they heard Native Americans use those words?! Still makes us laugh out loud.

1. “Home” is where we park it. Home is our 2022 Alliance Avenue, 36 ft, 5th wheel.