Sights seen: Pipestone National Monument, Corn Palace
My girlfriend's mother, who had lived all her life in New Mexico and Texas, once remarked upon flying into a Washington, D.C. airport that the landscape was so beautiful; that the trees, the grass, the flowers were all just so plentiful and bountiful. When my family set out from Rochester this morning and set out west as we had done many days now, the trees grew fewer in number, the grasses had gotten taller and brownish, and the flowers we were used to had morphed into ears of corn. And despite this new, alien landscape, it was still beautiful. A steady wind blew through the prairie grasses and caused it to undulate like waves on the ocean, and nowhere was this more obvious than at our first stop of the day, Pipestone National Monument.
The Pipestone quarries have been a sacred place for American Indians for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It is home to a special type of rock which formed from pressured clay and is and has been desired for its unique red tint and easy workability into many objects including trinkets and smoking pipes (hence 'pipestone'). The Dakota Sioux (or Lakota) believe(d) that the Great Spirit was displeased by the warring of the American Indians and directed its followers to use the rock from Pipestone to create an instrument of peace (the peacepipe) and to keep the quarry lands sacred and peaceful, which it has remained to this day. Our visit to Pipestone gave us an interesting look at the culture and traidtion of the North Plains American Indians, something completely new for us.
After leaving Pipestone, we sped west yet once more for Mitchell, South Dakota, our home for the night as well as home of the self-proclaimed "World's Only Corn Palace." Now wait one second before you go gettin' all judgemental on me. Think about it! You thought the bicycle from yesterday was cute, this is still cute, just on a much grander scale. The Corn Palace was originally built in 1892 to demonstrate to America and to the world the rich soil that South Dakota had to offer farmers by creating beautiful murals on the sides of the building... in corn. Yes that's right, corn. Each year the mural is changed through today when the current mural theme of "Everyday Heroes" will be replaced by "American Landmarks" and the thirteen different types of colored corn husks which will decorate the murals. You may think it's hokey or corny (seriously, how could I resist?), but it is truly a piece of Americana that I dare you to find somewhere else!
States visited to date: 8
National Park Passport cancellations to date: 2
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