After leaving Minnesota for South Dakota, the terrain itself doesn't actually change. It's still totally flat farmland, but the giant windmills are replaced by giant billboards every 50 feet or so. Most of the billboards are advertisements for either the Corn Palace of Mitchell, SD or Wall Drug of Wall, SD, since there isn't a whole lot else to advertise in SD. Many of these signs highlight a curious cultural feature of SD: the proliferation of scare quotes. South Dakotans like to put everything in quotes - my favorite example was a Corn Palace billboard advertising "'Tourist Information.'" Using non-South Dakotan English, there's no logical explanation for these quotes. Are they quoting some famous person who said "tourist information" once? "In the words of the great Thomas Jefferson, stop at the Corn Palace for 'tourist information!'" I don't think that's it. Maybe they are using quotes because they don't actually mean tourist information - maybe it's like "tourist information" - get it? Like, we're selling "tourist information" that you can "smoke." No, that doesn't sound right either - I don't think the Corn Palace was a cover for a marijuana business.
In any case, we survived the Corn Palace - it's very close to I-90 if you follow Google Maps directions, so it's not too much of an inconvenience and it is somewhat interesting (as interesting as a building covered in corn can be). Only bother taking the time if you really need a break, and whatever you do don't follow the signs because they take you on a roundabout tour of the whole town (trust me, there's nothing else worth seeing in Mitchell, SD). After the corn palace, our next stop was the Badlands. Definitely the highlight of South Dakota - you turn a corner in this wide open cornfield land and suddenly you are beset by the barren landscape of the Badlands (pictures to be posted soon). It didn't hurt that we arrived right before sunset.
The next day we woke up for sunrise in the Badlands (about as cool as sunset) and headed toward Mt. Rushmore, stopping along the way at Wall Drug. After seeing hundreds of miles of hype, I actually wasn't dissapointed. The store is endless, and everything that was advertised was there - 5 cent coffee, free ice water, cowboy clothes, and a giant animatronic T-Rex that roars every 10 minutes. I'm into that kind of gimmicky stuff, so if you are too it's definitely a must stop, and it's even closer to I-90 than the Corn Palace.Mt. Rushmore was less exciting for me. It looks exactly like it does in the pictures (big surprise) and it's about an hour round trip out of the way. Worth doing once if you're into big touristy monuments. We then went on to hike Crow Peak, a 7 mile round trip hike up a 1500' Black Hills peak with a great view of the Devil's Tower and 3 states from the top. This was a nice warmup for the trip, but if I were to redo the trip I would cut Rushmore and Crow Peak and just experience the Black Hills driving through scenic byway 14A, high-tailing it to the more exciting Wyoming.
Right before arriving at our campsite in the Black Hills, we encountered a herd of wild cattle in the middle of the road. I suppose they weren't wild so much as escaped, but it was still very amusing. They didn't seem too fazed by us, and we weren't really sure what to do - I really didn't want to risk pissing off the cows and having them destroy our car, leaving us stranded in South Dakota. Interestingly enough, after a minute of contemplation, they began observing OA road crossing protocol, crossing one by one. However, two stubborn cows stood in the middle of the road, staring at us disinterestedly. Finally, another car came in the other direction, and the two remaining cows exited the road peacefully. The campsite was very nice and worth the wait - for the rest of the night, there would be an occasional "moo" from down the road, and it never failed to get a laugh out of me.
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