There is a Palace in South Dakota!

Yes, there is a palace in South Dakota but there is no royalty living there. In the early 1900’s when it was still difficult to encourage people to settle some parts of the new country the people in Mitchell, South Dakota came up with an idea of building a convention center and had a competition to design murals for the front façade of the building using only the corn that was grown locally. Their thinking was that if they could showcase how well corn grew in South Dakota people might want to move there. I didn’t realize how many different varieties of corn all with different colored foliage and grain. There is a lot of interesting photos on display and admission is free so if you are ever in Mitchell, SD stop in and enjoy.

After touring the palace and surrounding shops we headed west again and ended up in Murdo, SD and parked in the parking lot of the Pioneer Auto Museum. This was real interesting place and it took a lot longer to tour all of it than one might think. They have over 250 antique or special interest cars, all kinds of farm equipment and even some displays of early 1900 buildings. Admission was very reasonable and we got to park for the night in their lot.

After touring the museum we had to eat so we went to a local restaurant just a short walk away and it was very busy and probably slower than one might accept as normal but I think the management addressed it really well by adding a statement to their menu.

When we leave here we are headed for Rapid City, SD the adventures that happened will be posted soon.