Saturday May 28 Western Minn Eastern SDak

We did about half of our driving today on very good non-freeway highways.  This let us drive through some very pretty towns.  We did observe a strange phenomenon, though.  In the middle of great expanses, there would be signs for roads with names like 720^th Ave.!  

In one area of southwestern Minnesota, we saw hundreds of windmills.  As we neared the South Dakota border, we heard tornado warnings on the radio for an area we had passed through an hour earlier.  Checking on-line news the next morning, there was some crop damage from them and some damage from large hail.

We had lunch at a chain we had never been in before – Ground Round – in Worthington, MN.  Ardith had a bacon cheese burger and Jim had a bruschetta burger. Both were good quality.  

Our first tourist stop was to see the falls at Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  While there two wedding parties were being photographed.  

 We also went to the top of the observation tower: Jim by steps and Ardith by elevator.  Jim actually got to the 5^th story before Ardith.  As with other cities, the falls were the main reason for the growth of the city, but nearby factories were abandoned when electric power became cheap.  The city has made a nice park of the area.

Our next destination was Mitchell, South Dakota, home of the Corn Palace. For nearly 120 years, the people of Mitchell have been decorating the interior and exterior of the town’s exhibition hall with corn and other grains.  Every summer, except dust bowl and World War II years, the decorations have been removed and a new design put up.  It takes about 100 acres of grain to do each year’s decoration.  Fields are devoted to different colors of corn and special varieties of other grains.  There were photographs of most of the old designs and sketches to show how the designs evolved.

 

We walked 3 blocks to dinner at Anchor Grill.  On our way, we passed a shop that had an American flag made from plastic flowers and star in its window. The food was somewhat standard and was quite decent.  Jim had chicken fettuccine alfredo and Ardith had a Philly cheese steak on sourdough.  We had a waitress who was on her 5^th day on the job and hadn’t yet gotten into the routine of remembering things and being efficient with her trips.  She was pleasant, though.  After dinner we soaked in the hot tub and Jim swam in the pool.