It’s hard to avoid all the billboards next to the highway pulling you towards the Corn Palace. It is basically what you’d imagine, a palace covered in corn: cobs, husks, grass, etc. It was started in the 1892 as a way to get people to move there and work on farms. From the pictures you can see that there used to be a lot of people living here, working in the farming industry, before mechanized farming. The design on the outside walls changes every year. This year two big murals were of the Corn Palace itself and Mount Rushmore.
I also swung by an Indian Ruins location, where about 1000 years ago there lived a group of Indians who built about a dozen homes. Only the foundations exist now, indentations in the land. Two or three of the homes have been excavated, which seems few. I asked the worker why the others have not and she said they just haven’t gotten to them yet. The archeologist only works here in July each year, helped by some interns from England. So it takes many, many years to do just a little work.
After that I had a jalapeno hot dog at the general store and went across the street to the Jitters, a local coffee shop that boasts “world’s best coffeehouse” (they also have smoothies and chair massages). The lady making my ice coffee asked me where I’m from, since she couldn’t pin my accent. I told her New York, but I’m an Army brat so my accent is mixed. She was a 44-year-old Air Force brat and she blames this fact for her inability to make friends. I didn’t quite get that but nodded.
