The Move to Seattle Gets Very Corny

We continued hauling our possessions across the continent today.

Goodbye Missouri.

Hello Iowa!

The closer we got to tonight's destination the more signs we saw of Sturgis. Sturgis already had a pretty bad reputation of being a pandemic super spreader event last year. This year the danger these motorcycle people posed was much more visceral: I was driving a very large vehicle and it was hard to see them on the road.

We said "no thank you" to Nebraska this time around.

South Dakota!

Forgive me Nelly, for I have sinned. I'm still from the Lou and proud, I swear! Look, even Nelly sold his St. Louis house and moved to California so I don't want to hear it.

We were under a pretty tight schedule to get our moving truck across creation but we did have a little bit of time for tourism. This may be my first time ever being in South Dakota, as far as I can recall. The Corn Palace lives in Mitchell, SD and is very corny and very regal. It's essentially a gymnasium with murals made out of corn covering both outside and inside of the building.

They are eager to inform you that they are the world's only corn palace. I had assumed that this was because it's a ridiculous idea that only one madman was allowed to bring to fruition. Wikipedia learned me good once again, though. "From 1887 to 1930, at least thirty-four corn palaces were built across the Midwest United States; only the Mitchell Corn Palace has remained intact." Apparently Johnny Cash has played here three times. So corny.

"Twelve naturally-occurring shades of corn are grown by local farmers to create the artwork."

You know, if you think about it, the story of this building with a bunch of corn cobs nailed to it is really the story of America.

We bought some corn to be our very own, but it didn't last very long.

Another odd roadside attraction that I couldn't resist was Wall Drug located in Wall, South Dakota.

The little store in a dinky little town was on the highway leading to Mount Rushmore. They lured people to the store by advertising free ice water.

We had a very fancy dinner of buffalo burgers and a bottle of wine.

I've never heard of chokecherry before. With a name like that you wouldn't think they'd be great.

They're still giving away ice water in these humorously tiny cups.

The truck didn't have cruise control which was much suck. Just keeping our speed stable was a lot of work and a lot of pedal pushing. One thing that was nice about South Dakota and some of the other sparsely populated states was that the speed limit on the highway was 80. We had weighed this poor truck down with so much crap that I could just floor it and never make it over 90. That was actually super convenient.

We laid our heads down in Rapid City, SD, on the other end of the state.

The closer we got to Sturgis the thicker the clouds of motorcycles became.

The hotel had this odd red light in the bathroom that I guess was for heat? 

You could turn the normal light off and just sit on the toilet and pretend you were in the Shining.