Some Day is Here: Wall and Mitchell, South Dakota

Last evening, I was able to get some photo ops with the horses in the pasture adjacent to the campground.

We traveled 291 miles today from Hermosa, S.D. through Wall, South Dakota to Mitchell, South Dakota. our final destination was R&R Campground for one night.
We stopped for a visit to the internationally known Wall Drug Store or "Wall Drug" in Wall, S.D. This is a tourist attraction which is a shopping mall consisting of a drug store, restaurants, and a gift shop. The NY Times has described Wall Drug as "a sprawling tourist attraction of international renown. it takes in more than $10 million a year and draws some two million annual visitors to a remote town. The small town drugstore made its first step towards fame when it was purchased by Ted Hustead in 1931. Hustead was a Nebraska native and pharmacist who was looking for a small town with a Catholic Church in which to establish his business. he bought Wall Drug located in a 231-person town in what he referred to as "the middle of nowhere". Business was very slow until his wife, Dorothy, got the idea to advertise free ice water to parched travelers to the newly-opened Mount Rushmore Monument 60 miles to the west . Wall Drug grew into a cowboy themed shopping mall/department store. Today, they were offering free coffee and doughnut to Vietnam Veterans!!!!!

Other presidential statues near Mount Rushmore

Bruce said "take a picture of that camper'
I asked "why?'

Bruce said "That is a mother-in-law camper

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We traveled on to Mitchell, S.D. still sharing the road!!

We got set up and then we went to see this year's corn palace decoration. The World's Only Corn Palace stands as a majestic, uniquely American, folk art icon on the rolling prairies of South Dakota. Mitchell's first Corn Palace was built in 1892, when Mitchell was only 12 years old to showcase the rich soil of South Dakota and to encourage people to settle there. It was a wooden castle structure on Mitchell's Main Street. It was rebuilt in 1905 and then again in 1921. The 1921 design was by the architectural firm Rapp and Rapp from Chicago. Russian style onion domes and Moorish minarets were added in 1937. It costs $130,000 for the annual palace decoration. The exterior corn murals are replaced and redesigned each year with a new theme. The outside of the Corn Palace is stripped and redecorated with new corn and grains. over the summer, 3000 bushels of rye, oat heads and sour dock are tied in bundles and attached. when the crop is ready, roughly 275 thousand ears of corn are sawed in half lengthwise and nailed to the building following patterns created by local artists.