Thursday, May 31

Woke up in Mitchell, SD and found breakfast at a diner (Fanny-something) while we planned our day. First we went to the Prehistoric Indian Village, where our very nice, but somewhat breathless high-school-student-summer-job-tour-guide told us all about the Native Americans that lived on that spot. There was an archeodome under which archeology students (not currently there) were carefully excavating the ancient sites of the earth lodges that housed the Native Americans. The best part was when Devin and I got to practice throwing spears/arrows with the atlatl. I hit the deer target right in the chest! I was the first girl to hit a target. Victory! (It wasn’t the deer I was aiming at, but we don’t have to worry about that.) Devin wouldn’t let us leave until he hit one too; he knew he’d never hear the end of it. To keep the playing field even, as soon as he hit one, we had to leave immediately. After that we went to the famous Mitchell Corn Palace. It is their civic center, where they have craft shows, basketball games, etc. But the outside is decorated with ears of corn. This year’s Corn Palace was a tribute to rodeo, and there were corn murals of cowboy boots, rodeo scenes, and more. We went inside to look at the photos of all of the previous Corn Palace designs, dating back to the late 1800’s! Next we set off westward again. We tried to take a scenic bypass that would have led us north to Pierre, we followed a snaking river in order to reach the specific road, and when we finally got to it, the road was closed and we turned south back to I-90. The whole detour was about an hour. We pressed on until we neared the Badlands. One of us recomended that we take another scenic highway through the Badlands citing that it couldn't take more than an hour or so. We pulled off 90 and started through. THe first pull off was jaw droppingly gorgeous, we just sat there staring around at how alien the landscape looked. We made our way to the next pull off and spent another while there. An hour and about 300 pictures had elapsed before we realized we had to get a move on, but even then we had trouble tearing our eyes from the striated dark red and tan landscape. We had our first run in with prairie dogs and Bison here, although it they were too far away to get a good picture. Finally we realized that if we didn't start driving we wouldn't make it to the campsite til 9pm and we had no idea when the park closed. We hightailed it to Custer State Park straight through Rapid City to the south. On the way in we had one of the trips best moments. We rounded a bend and right smack in the road was a Bison. He was so close we could have spit on him so we circled around and videoed him at close range. Though we saw some bison in the Badlands Custard, thats what we nicknamed him, was up close and awe inspiring. We picked up essentials: firewood, firestarter, bread, butter, and cheese. We found our reserved campsite – completely open, no trees – lit a fire and set up our tent. We made campfire-grilled cheese, read more Harry Potter, and went to bed.