It was a dark and stormy morning…..

Well it wasn’t that dark, since we didn’t leave until 9:30 as we hadn’t any water. Our well was being cleaned..we had forgot all about the maintenance schedule…

*sigh*

So we took our dirty selves to the store and bought bottled water to have quickie baths in and then smelling pretty we left…

As we drove over the Mississippi River into Iowa, the wild sunflowers were glowing in the sun. At this time of year the wild grasses have a silvery feathery top on them. It is so lovely. We decided to drive north through Iowa to Minnesota then over west to South Dakota.

We drove past the world’s largest truck stop. As you can see the sky was starting to darken. We hit hard rain several times, hard enough to have to pull over. We saw several cars in ditches but thankfully everyone was fine.

The skies cleared as we reached South Dakota.  We realized fairly quickly that people in South Dakota really like signs. I mean they really like signs.

We started to see a few signs here and there. But then we saw one we couldn’t ignore..

Hmmmm. A Corn Palace? The world’s only Corn Palace?

We tried to resist but then we saw this one…

A Corn Palace and a ban pun and Free!…I like corn, I like bad puns..and free is always good…we needed to stop for the night but Dummy would not let us forget that we were so near the home of the Corn Palace…

At the hotel he nagged and nagged and hogged the remote until we agreed to go over to the Corn Palace the next morning…

The little so and so….

The next morning dawned bright and crisp and clear. A perfect September day. A day made for seeing corn palaces…

And there was a corn palace..and it was free.

These people like corn. A lot.

Even the street posts..well you can see for yourself. They like corn.

And then we saw the Corn Palace in all it’s glory. I had envisioned a sort of Lincoln Log type of model built with corn but oh no this was much bigger. In fact these people took a perfectly good building (albeit one with Russianesque onion domes and medieval turrets painted in glaring greens and yellows) and glued 300000 pieces of corn and various grasses all over it. It is pretty impressive. I can’t even get two sheets of paper to stay glued together. If I was the one who glued all that stuff on, people would be getting boinked in the head from falling cobs..so kudos to them.

Apparently they’ve been doing this every year for a good long time. Every year has a theme. This year’s theme was American Pride and Transportation. Cause you know we are just not a patriotic enough country..and lord knows none of us drive enough.

A closeup of the corn.

 Why did they do it?  And how do they stop the lights from setting the dry grass on fire?

I don’t know.

Sometimes it’s best not to ask.

We made a quick stop at Cabela’s to look at dead animals and an iron sculpture..

Smile..

Dummy lost his manners and ignored the signs telling people not to climb on the sculpture.

So he had to go in the glove box for a while.

And we continued on..