Day 41: La Crosse, WI to Badlands NP

Stops:

The Corn Palace, Mitchell, SD

Badlands NP, SD

Every town has to have that one thing that brings in the visitors and the tourism.  For Mitchell, SD it's the World's Only Corn Palace.  No, the palace isn't made entirely of corn but it has murals decorated from corn cobs and grains from the local region.

The process takes some time as the old murals are stripped starting in late May and the new murals are laid out in August and finish up in October. Every year has a different theme, this year was "We Celebrate." By the way, it's not cheap to do the new murals either.  It costs $130k every year.  There are 12 different colors of corn used and special fields laid aside just to grow the corn.  It's quite a process to keep up every year.  If you are thinking, what about a drought? Does that affect the murals? The answer is yes.  In fact, in 2006, because of severe drought, there were no new murals.

The palace was built in 1892 to show the world that South Dakota had a healthy agricultural climate.  Did you know that the corn palace we see today is not the original.  In fact, this is the third iteration of it.  

We made it just in time to the Badlands NP to catch the sunset, and I mean just in time as I literally had 10 mins to get the following pictures.

Once the sun went down, we tried to find a campsite, but the Badlands only has campsites at opposite ends.  We went to the one towards our entrance but it was full.  The other one was of gravel road over 20 miles away. No thanks.  

We decided to go to the ranger program at the amphitheater instead.  We learned about the park, but even better, we learned about the National Grasslands.  Mostly they are located in the Great Plains region of the US, but there are little areas in California, Oregon, and Washington for example.  You can take your car 35 ft from the center of any road on the grasslands and disperse camp up to 350 ft away from the center of any road.  It just so happens that Buffalo Gap Grasslands is just outside of The Badlands.  After the ranger talk, we tried to find a road in Buffalo Gap and we ended up finding a road to a trailhead and stayed at the trailhead for the night.  Another night, another problem solved and complete privacy and silence to boot.