Mitchell, SD May 23 - 31

The trip to Mitchell, SD was somewhat uneventful in that I don't really remember anything happening along the way. If I had posted this sooner than June 2nd, I'd probably remember more, but that's the way it goes when you're retired, right? But as we pulled into our new temporary place to stay, I noticed that we were the only ones there with the exception of one other rig that looks like it stays there all the time. There was much more grass than at Badlands, so there was more winged-and-six-legged wildlife as well. Bunches more! Luckily we got the moho set up in a matter of 15 minutes or so, and then I started the task of finding the satelites once again. It took us through that afternoon and the next morning before we found them invisible things after moving the dish to an area void of trees about 80' away. I'm gonna master this art just like other RVers do, I wonder if there's an RVer merit badge for things like that?

Having remembered that we were retirees, we took the next day off and just stayed in the campground. I found this totally relaxing and enjoyed it a bunch. However, somewhere along the lines, the rain came down hard and the leak that we thought had been repaired reared its ugly head again. Going to the local RV store, Jack's Campers off of exit 330 in Mitchell, we were able to get the Eternabond that I used to seal the leak. Hopefully. I put this stuff down where the problem was. And the next day, put it down where I thought the leak was again since I didn't fix it the first time. This time, I patched over where the roof mounted dish had been. Haven't had enough of a deluge to see if the leak has gone away yet, but we'll probably be getting one before the summer is over. Aside from the leak, it was really great just taking it easy; I read a book which is something that I haven't done in years. Having said that, I don't know when I'll start my next book though.

We did eventually make our way to Mitchell enough to find our way around to the Corn Palace though. From taking the brief tour of the facility, it was built to show that South Dakota had an healthy agricultural climate for corn. This is the third Corn Palace with the first two being built using quite a bit of wood structure, and the last being built to current building codes using structural steel with corn being used in the interior and exterior murals. I didn't think that really was the case, but I show a close-up of the corn in the eagle mural. The exterior murals are changed every year at a cost of approximately $140,000. The Corn Palace has served as a venue for many big name entertainers with one of them being Myron Floren, a childhood accordion hero of mine. In addition, many other events are held there as well. However, there were no more events to take place there until after summer is over with so the main floor was turned into a giant souvenir shop for, what else, corn and the Corn Palace. Well, there was other stuff there also, but mostly it was just for corn.

Thursday night saw a few more campers coming into the campground so that we weren't the only ones there any more. On Friday the campground fill up completely. As a motorhomer, I found it interesting that there were so few motorhomes there with only about 10% being the self propelled RVs. The rest were obviously travel trailers and 5th wheels (with most of them being from Jayco). Katie said this was the case because everyone already has a truck in the midwest, so it'd just be natural to get something to pull rather than another vehicle to drive.
There were a few people who really roughed it: they stayed in tents and slept on the ground! Ugh! Most of them were from a motorcycle organization called Christian Motorcycle Association. They are a wonderful, friendly group of people who love the Lord, and sponsored the worship service held in the campground club house Sunday morning.

Sunday and Monday nights we got to take part in severe thunderstorm activity with a tornado warning on Sunday night and a tornado watch on Monday night. While a tornado didn't materialize in our area, it was kinda scary for us (me at least) as we haven't been in tornado country for quite some time. All that really happened was a lot of thunder and lightning, wind and rain, lots of rain. Had emails and phone calls from family and friends asking about our condition, etc. From the weather reports lately, moving away from the midwest doesn't mean that tornados won't be experienced still the same. So I guess that our time in Iowa which is normally out of the tornado area may very well be susceptible to them. Not how I wanted it to be, but it may very well be that way. After the tornado watch on Monday night, the wind cranked up from the west and blew at a fairly good rate. The next morning, Tuesday, when we were getting ready to leave the campground, the wetness from the rain the previous night had dried up from the grass from all the wind, so it wasn't too bad going the 80' or so to get the dish. That wind was gonna be a boon to us as we headed east to Clear Lake, Iowa.