We left Madison, eager to travel further west to get to all of the amazing parks everyone keeps telling us about.  Unfortunately from Madison, there was a bit of a long, boring drive ahead, through Minnesota and South Dakota.  Lucky for us, there was one national park site and a bunch of tourist traps to keep us amused!  I’ll give the highlights of our journey en route to the Badlands:

State Parks

We have been told that we should not discredit state parks even though we are aiming to explore most of the National Parks in this adventurous year.  We began to see our friends’ point when we overnighted in the White Fox Campground at Myre-Big Island State Park.  A quiet park with a starry night sky, this park had some of the cleanest showers we’ve seen to date.  It was a very welcoming place to stay one night, and the park ranger convinced us that we should visit ALL of the tourist traps along our way, including backtracking 30 minutes to the spam museum the following morning.

Pipestone National Monument

Before we hit up all of the tourist traps that South Dakota had to offer, we visited Pipestone National Monument, a national park site dedicated to the pipestone quarried by Native Americans and used to make pipes (hence the name, pipestone).  We watched a video about the pipestone, observed an artisan carving a pipe, and took a short nature walk around the area.

The Spam Museum

Can you believe there is a whole museum dedicated to spam?  Well there is, and it was an entertaining 20 minute break from our journey.  A few things I learned:  (1) spam was eaten by many during World War II and (2) there are surprisingly few ingredients in spam (you can pronounce all of them, a surprise in this day and age!).  We also sampled some spam hors d’oeuvres- i.e., spam on a pretzel stick.  It is not so bad- kind of like a hot dog but with pork.  I wasn’t a huge fan (but then again I don’t like hot dogs either).  But they sell them in small packages that do not need refrigeration, so I think Adam might be substituting out his occasional hot dog for spam.  I think in the end it will be more healthful for Adam, as hot dogs are typically sold in packages of 8 and I won’t eat any of them.

Corn Palace

The exterior of Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, is decorated annually with corn.  This was hyped up on the interwebs but in person was a bit disappointing.  I thought we were going to see mosaics with individual corn kernels.  The mosaics are made from entire ears of corn; it’s still cool, but not as exciting as I had hoped.

Next up: the Badlands!