"You can't miss the Corn Palace."

I cannot count the number of people who said that we needed to see the Corn Palace, and I am now convinced that they just wanted to have more people go so that they would not be embarrassed that they had been there. 

This place is something else. 

As you can see from the photo below, it is large. It is gaudy. And it is decorated with ears of corn, corn cobs, and corn husks. 

This was a two-gummy day. 

It's made from all corn... no bricks or stones.

Inside, they have concessions as well as this area filled with t-shirts, tchotchkes, and just about anything else corn palace-y that you can think of to buy. 

One of the things that I wanted to see what the statue of Dignity of Earth and Sky. It is a huge and beautiful sculpture, right on a bluff on the Missouri River in Chamberlain, South Dakota.

Dan in front of the World's Largest Dignity of Earth and Sky statue

I was not embarrassed to be photographed here...

Then, we were off to seek out the human skeleton walking a dinosaur skeleton...

...and we followed that up with a visit to the World's Largest Concrete Prairie Dog. 

This place also has real prairie dogs that, for $1, you can give peanuts. A couple of these little things were into it. Others could not have given a damn that we had peanuts for them. I went in having read the reviews about the prairie dogs crawling on people, so I was poised to get the hell out asap if necessary. 

This one cared and ran after a peanut.

Another peanut eater

This one wanted something else, which we did not have. 

The following photos are of the Badlands. We drove a perimeter of a portion of the National Park and plan to go back tomorrow to do some quick hikes. They are beautiful and cool. There used to be a shallow sea that stretched from Canada to Mexico, from Iowa to Wyoming. Once the Rockies started forming, the ground was pushed up and the sea went bye-bye. What can be seen in the Badlands are some awesome formations that are striated (I think that's the term).

We are spending the night in Wall, SD, a cheesy little town, so that we can do more Badlands tomorrow. While here, we caught the World's Largest Jackalope. Quite a pleasant surprise for Dan, since that was not on the list. Unfortunately, the gummies had worn off.

One last thing: We ate breakfast in a little place just down the street from our hotel. On the wall were painted lots and lots of sayings. Here are a few: