Insert your own corny joke here (or maybe under the comments)

With the worst part of the day already past us (sleeping sitting straight up b/c there wasn't time to organize the GOLF cart to recline the seats last night before the rain), we got off to a great start this morning. Mass at St. Mary Help of Christians in Salem, South Dakota was a surprisingly beautiful church for how small the town is. Afterwards we had coffee and a cinnamon roll at Mom and Pop's Pastry where the daily mass crowd gathers each morning. It was 4 bucks for two rolls and two cups of coffee served in a setting that made me feel like I was walking into my grandparent's kitchen and somehow all of their friends had shown up. Well the two "youngsters" as we were refered to as stuck out just a little bit and we were quickly welcomed in with loving arms and a warm cup of joe. We got to talking to a couple of the local folk and were telling them about our journey and where we were headed for today and asked about the low down on South Dakota and the sights to see. They passed on a few tips and one woman confessed that she had lived in South Dakota for the last 55 years of her life and she'd only been once, but we quickly countered with how it's like that living in DC...there might be more than you could see in two weeks of walking around there, but I hardly ever go to see the sights.

Our next stop of the day brought us to the town of Mitchell home of the Corn Palace where each year the decorate the outside of the building with yellow, white, and brown corn with other locally grown grains and produce. The murals that they make out of corn were pretty impressive and quite appropriately themed to our trip as it was America's Destinations and by the end of the trip we'll have gone to almost all of the ones they displayed (we're missing the statue of liberty and Cocoa Beach/Cape Canaveral where they launch the space shuttles, but we've been to both of those places seperatly already so we're doing pretty good for ourselves on this trip).

For lunch we stopped in Chamberlin at Anchor's grill, which from the amount of trucks parked out front was the most happenin place in town...i.e. if the locals eat there it's proably pretty good. I got a tasty South Dakota Buffalo burger with waffel fries...and Chip got some burger with fungus plants on top...blah. The thing that caught our eye on the way in was the dessert display so we figured that since this is probably going to be our most substantial meal of the day we needed to check out how good "mom's apple pie a la mode" was. I've been doing my best to take pictures of the local food and it's presentation, but it was gone faster then I could remember to take a picture of it. If you see a picture with an empty plate and fork that would be the remains of what once was a darn good piece of apple pie a la mode!

We're now on our way to the Badlands National Park, Wall Drug, and Mt Rushmore so we'll write more about that later, but I do need to end with how much I'm loving the rolling black hills of South Dakota...it is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend you come and visit.