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Ok, folks! Here we are! Day one of our trip!
On the docket today:
Drive drive drive drive drive drive CORN PALACE drive drive drive drive WALL DRUG drive hotel. I'm sure the day will be riveting. I am starting this blog on Sunday night, just to get a jump on it, and currently the plan is to wake up at 5 and leave by 6. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen, I am just little ol' Drea from the past. Who is also expecting her period any fucking moment, and that is not a treat for this trip. The first few days of my period are usually murderous (thanks, endometriosis! Thanks, perimenopause! God save my little broken body!), and having to push through...which I will...WILL make me irritable and I don't want to be a drag on anybody's adventure economy.
Drea from the future of the past, but really I'm just Drea from the present. I am comfortably sitting in our hotel in Wall, South Dakota. We made it to our first destination! Let's recap the day.
Now, for my two dedicated readers, you may recall that I am fucking on one about leaving on time for trips. Most things, really. Appointments. Uh...trips. I'm a bit more free with my time schedule when I haven't been the person to plan things, because I am less stress and all over less involved, but I am almost always the person who plans trips, so I want to get going when it's time to get going.
What time did I want to leave this morning? 6am. I wanted to leave at 6 am. What time DID I leave this morning? I am sorry to report that we left at 6:57am. I woke up at 5 like the good, diligent, Type A AuDHD trip planner I am, drank my coffee, and busied myself with the stuff Derek and I didn't get to yesterday. I finished prepping his dinners, I put all of my delicious baked goods in the coolers, I got dressed, and waited for Derek, who had not even gotten out of bed until 5:30. He got to sleep an extra 30 minutes. One of the reasons I wake up so early on long drive days is so I can drink my coffee and have my morning poops so I won't have to lower and debase myself to poop in a public venue, which I am horrible about being ok with. Did I poop this morning? No I did not.
While I was busy NOT having the BM of my life, Derek was busy doing who knows what spice. I DID almost forget all of my dinners, and grabbed them right as we were about to actually leave. When he saw them, he excitedly said, "See? I'm not the one making us late today!" And I said, "yes you are, I would have just left these behind." and he said, "oh". Oh indeed.
We finally got on the road (did we forget things? We did! Derek's big ass water canteens that I washed and filled for him), and I was very angry inside, but I only snapped at Derek about it twice. And even then, I made sure to say afterwards, "I am very irritated about not leaving on time." Which is not an apology, but Derek didn't apologize for making us an hour late, so I'd say we're even.
Our drive was pretty uneventful. We were initially going to stop in Omaha for a manual shutter release for me, but I waffled about it enough that I decided that meant I didn't actually need one. I did momentarily entertain the idea of heading to Mutual of Omaha's Zoo, since it's supposed to be one of the best in the country, but leaving an hour late really dampened my spirit and all of my "let's stop at the zoo" musings were pretty half hearted.
I took the first leg of the trip while Derek tried to sleep some more, but he was struggling to sleep through his anxiety attacks. I just listened to Florence + the Machine and thought about the Corn Palace. We had to stop to pee about two hours in to the drive, and another two hours later stopped to pee again, and Derek took over driving at that point and I didn't drive again for the rest of the way to Wall. I offered, but he said it was fine. And I did not believe him, but I was also incredibly tired.
We started getting Corn Palace signs about 30 minutes outside of Corn Palace:
Corn't you glad I didn't make this pun myself?
It should be said that Derek pitched Corn Palace to me as a total joke. He was not serious about stopping there, I mocked the place right out of the gate, and of course decided we absolutely HAD to go. Now if I'm being honest, I was kind of expecting some like...AI Slop fever dream inside the hallowed halls of The World's ONLY Corn Palace, but it was actually very restrained. And it was just real corn. Like, really real corn. In murals.
Those murals on the side of the building are all just...corns. Corn corn corn. I imagined something much wilder and I wasn't really disappointed when my imagination missed the reality mark.
Good ol' corn. Delicious AND functional. But that is solid worksmanship. And they redo these murals every year. That's a lot of wasted corn, but the birds seemed pretty pleased about it, so it can't be THAT wasteful.
Taken at the Corn Gift Shop.
I messaged Allen and lamented the fact that Neil Gaiman is a dirty, pervy rapist sex pest, because I kept thinking about all of the ways he wrote about locations in America and the power they have. Corn Palace isn't like House on the Rock, but there is a gravitas there that is....out of place. They even have a shrine unto themselves, showcasing all of their corn murals dating all the way back to 1892.
Corn left, corn right, first corn I see tonight...
The mural theme that year was "Oh, Corn!"
And there is a little corn shrine of corn tchotchkes after the corn mural hallway:
Derek pointed out the corn husk dolls and said his mom had corn husk dolls and I was like, you should take a picture and send it to her! And he said, "well she's still got hers." How practical of him.
There was a basketball court in the Corn Palace, an unexpected feature, and you may be deeply disappointed to learn that it was just regular, boring basketball. No corn outfits, or corn pun names, or corn mascots, just the home team absolutely getting their corn creamed by the visiting team. The basketball court is where they house their permanent corn murals.
Eat your heart out, Madison Square Garden! - Derek
We wandered over to the gift shop where I bought the house a corn palace magnet (We're All Ears at the Corn Palace!") and my dad and Caryn a Corn Palace magnet (it just says AW SHUCKS and CORN PALACE on it), and then we left. On the way out, there is a little garden area where I got very excited to see a monarch on a blazing star (both a little late in the season, but I know nothing about South Dakota, so), and then I spot another, but this one looks...weird to me.
It was kind of cupping the flower and fluttering and I was like...did this one hatch late? Is it new? And Derek was like, yeah it kinda looks like it's pumping its wings...so I inspected closer and found that it was about to be bitten into by a rather large preying mantis. I made Derek shoo the mantic away, we saved the monarch butterfly, and we got in the car and drove the three hours to Wall.
We started getting all manner of signs for Wall Drug, and each was more hilarious than the next. My favorites were this flavor:
As told by. Perplexing.
This was another reason I wanted to leave on time today...I wanted to have time to go to Wall Drug TODAY instead of taking time away from Badlands. But sadly, we did not arrive in time. Wall Drug closes at 7, and we had to make the most of our morning or something.
Another kind of advertisement started cropping up and I was fucking delighted by it. The first one I saw, I laughed and repeated it to Derek and he didn't believe me. So the next one came up, I pointed it out to him, and we both had a long laugh about it.
Rushmore Borglum: The E! True Hollywood Story
Derek and I were musing about what in the unholy shit Rushmore Borglum could be. Was Mt. Rushmore named after a man named Rushmore Borglum? Rushmore was a first name, not a last name? Who was this maniac? Since I flat out fucking refuse to visit Mt. Rushmore (if we are not going to call it The Black Hills and we have to call it something else, I vote Mt. Borglum from here on out), I had to look up my main man Rushmore Borglum.
So The Gutz is the dickhead that blew up The Black Hills and carved the fuck stool presidential faces into it. He's a rather prolific sculptor. And a cretin. No thank you, Borglum. But I do want to turn his last name into a verb or an adjective immediately.
I think my favorite thing about road trips is all of the roadside Americana weirdness. My dad kept asking if I was going to see the world's largest ball of twine, and while no, dad, it wasn't a specific destination, it IS something I would stop for. I love that shit. For instance, we drove by something called FIREHENGE, and I'll be honest, I don't understand the theme:
Everything makes sense but the rocket.
I have driven through a lot of the country, and I believe this is only my second American Henge. Apparently, the US is just fuckin' lousy with henges. I was inspired to look them up, and had to stop myself from going really deep into henges in this bitch or I would have read about them all night and never finished this blog. But if you're curious about the most well known henges, check them out. Funnily enough, neither Firehenge nor Cadillac Ranch (which I've always thought was Carhenge?) make the cut of fun, quirky henges to make these lists.
We made one stop at the one and only scenic lookout there was once we got to the general area of Badlands, and it was spectacular. It isn't going to look like much, and honestly I initially wasn't going to take any photos at all because I just wanted to enjoy the moment. But we all know I took a couple of photos, and it didn't stop me from enjoying the moment one bit.
This is stunning landscape. I don't think it could be further from Bad Lands if it tried.
I would of course be remiss to not point out that we are traveling on stolen land.
Tomorrow is Badlands for really real, and I am so fucking excited.
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