The Corn Palace

This morning we woke up early, took hot showers, then went to play on the "pillow" with some friends we had made. We must have jumped for an hour! My parents ended up setting down our camper, checking out, then watched us play for a while. We headed on our way to Iron Mountain. There are three tunnels on the road going through the mountain. They all frame Mount Rushmore. After driving up and down the mountain, we headed to the Badlands. We were only in the park for about two hours because we were heading to the Corn Palace. The park was absolutely amazing. It looks like there were cities there that got covered in layers of dirt, dust, and rock. They have colored stripes running through them. We stopped at the visitors center. They had a "class room" there where they were working on a fossil of a dinosaur skull that had an extinct bird leg in its mouth. They also had a keychain-making station. You used beads to represent the different layers of rock. Depending on how big the layer was depended on how many heads you used. You used one animal charm (I used an elephant) to represent an extinct animal that somewhat resembled each other. We saw a big horned sheep. He was no more than ten feet away from us, sitting on the side of the road. We saw a herd of prairie dogs that have a plague. (The park ranger said it is in the same family as the Bubonic Plague.) We even saw a snake. Apparently that is the most populated animal in the Badlands. There are warning signs all over the place! On our way out, we took a picture with a giant prairie dog. We continued on our way to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. It closed in four hours, and our GPS said it would take three-and-a-half hours to get there. We made it to the Corn Palace with ten minutes to spare. What happens (why it's called the Corn Palace) is people make murals out of corn husks. It was so cool! They made Mount Rushmore, Indians, rockstars, and other tourist attractions. Morgan and Joshua have been collecting pennies from penny crushers. They have a total of 29. I'm now up to 33 postcards. We ended up pulling into Walmart around midnight then packed up early this morning. We then drove into Blue Earth, Minnesota to see the Jolly Green Giant. He is 50 feet tall and wears a size 78 in shoes. After we left the Jolly Green Giant, we headed to Des Moines, Iowa to get lunch. We ate at Zombie Burger, a restaurant recommended to us by our friends, the Daughertys. We are currently at lunch. Our next location is Hannibal, Missouri. We will get home tomorrow, most likely late in the evening. Stay tuned to experience our adventure!