Corn Palace South Dakota

On our way east from Mount Rushmore and the Badlands, we found the Corn Palace in the roadsideamerica.com webiste.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2215

This is in Mitchell, SD. You exit off the highway, drive about 2 miles into the downtown area and come across this huge building covered with corn !

It really is amazing viewing it all covered with corn. There were workers still putting some on the front when we were there.

We'll let the photos speak for themselves below...

You can see that it's corn stalks and corn itself.

Blank wall already for corning!

This is down the side of the building.....more corn !

Inside the building were corn displays telling about the many uses for corn, a history of the palace and old photos of how the building looked years ago

Here's some excerpts from the website:

Mitchell's Corn Palace is built out of reinforced concrete, not corn. Every spring, however, its exterior is completely covered with thousands of bushels of native South Dakota corn, grain and grasses that are arranged into large murals.

Typical yearly themes are South Dakota Birds or A Salute To Agriculture or Youth In Action. Locals take great pride in the Palace's "corn-septual art" and "ear-chitecture" (Mitchell isn't called the Corn Capital of the World for nothing).

The Corn Palace serves as an auditorium for touring celebrities (Lawrence Welk played there five times), as a sports arena for the various Kernels teams, and as the headquarters of Corn Palace Week, the apex of Mitchell's yearly social calendar.

Corn Palace Week marks the end of the harvest -- and the beginning of the planning for next year's Palace theme.

A drought in 2006 was so tough on local corn crops that for the first time the Corn Palace skipped its annual redecoration. A drought nearly as bad in 2012 almost did the same thing, but the Palace was able to get by with fewer than its usual 12 natural colors of cultivated corn.

The Corn Palace has one more title - the World's Largest Bird Feeder. After Corn Palace Week ends and winter sets it, local pigeons and squirrels make a feast of the tasty murals.



Wonderful place along the road to stop for an hour or so and marvel at the workmanship

Kim and Steve

Niagara Falls

We've tried to get up to Niagara Falls at least four times as we traveled close to it but it's way out of the way so we ended up going elsewhere. This year we were determined to see what all the hubub was about.....and we were not disappointed. And it's not just the falls themselves. The park has many great walking and bike trails and, of course, many viewpoints to see the river, the islands and where the water goes over the falls.

Lots of great photos and some movies way at the bottom of this blog.

Of course, the falls are spectacular, but what we got to see was the river leading down to the falls. This is what it looks like at the water begins to funnel towards the falls.

One of the "must-do" activities is the Maid of the Mist boat ride. This ride takes you past the American Falls and right into the Horseshoe Falls where you get soaked ! Those rain slickers only help you so much. It's like taking a shower.

Kim is not quite sure about the boat ride....but...

....she LOVED it.

You can see the orangish-colored walkways and the people on them. This is called "Cave of the Winds" where you can walk right up to and almost underneath the falls.

There also was an elevator that took you down so that you can get very close underneath the American Falls.

This walkway is rebuilt every year due to the cold and ice expanding and contracting the rocks.

This view is from what they call "The Hurricane Deck" which, as you can see, if right underneath....and boy, do you get soaked !

You can tell we had a great time.

Here's some movies....

All of our photos are here as well:

https://picasaweb.google.com/100376105788369441882/NiagaraFalls02?authuser=0&feat=directlink