Meandering Magees: The Corn Palace and More

The Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota is a one-of-a-kind example of folk art. Before going there, I never would have thought of it as such. I envisioned a building covered with corn stalks or ears of corn. Which it technically is, but in such an artful way, that we couldn’t help but stand and admire the murals. The pictures below may look like paint, but all the murals are made from parts of corn stalks. And they use 12 different colors of corn – I never knew there were twelve different colors! I wish I had taken a close up picture of the designs so you could see the actual ears. The murals on the outside of the building change every year, with a local artist coming up with the images based on a theme picked by the Corn Festival committee. Then, workers do “corn by number” as they attached the correct color corn and rye grass and silk to complete the picture. The murals inside the Palace were once on the outside. They don’t change; only get freshened up every 10 years.

The Corn Palace is in its third location, as it outgrew the previous two buildings. What began as a celebration of the harvest in 1892 has developed into a year-round facility that is not only a tourist attraction, but a useful venue as well. Inside the Corn Palace is an auditorium for plays, shows and sporting events. The Mitchell High School basketball team – the Kernels – plays their home games here. The orientation film quoted a writer as saying, “Playing in the Corn Palace is like playing in the Boston Garden of the Midwest.”

In the lobby, there was a tower of sorts, the center being corn stalks, and attached all around them were products made from corn or corn by-products. Boy, corn is not just your mama's vegetable with dinner. Useful trivia - despite the popularity of popcorn (who goes to the theater without buying some?), less than 1% of the corn grown is popcorn. And despite the abundance of sweet corn consumed at summer picnics (whether you eat an ear typewriter style or spin it ), less than 1% of the corn grown in the US is sweet corn. That leaves more than 98% of the corn grown to all the other things, including food for animals. (I say useful trivia. Mike says useless. Take your pick.)

Mitchell still holds a Corn Festival every year. Only now, big-name entertainment comes to this South Dakota town to help celebrate the bounty of the farms, As with Wall Drug, the Corn Palace is a testament to unique thinking, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a whole town embracing and promoting such thinking.

Mitchell also is home to the Dakota Discovery Center, the Carnegie Resource Center, the Prehistoric Indian Village and the George McGovern Museum, making it more than just a one-stop town.

As we travel down the road, I was thinking – we really have this down to a science. Once we decide on a destination, Mike does all the research on campgrounds. I call and make the reservation. Mike then does all the navigating and plotting the route to the campground, both with the GPS in our RV and the Maps app on his iPad. He lets me know how far of a drive we’ll have. When we take off, he does all the outdoor unhooking of our water, sewer and electric, while I latch a few doors that we don’t want to fly open while going down the road, like the shower door, the sliding bedroom door, our closet doors and the refrigerator doors (which actually did fly open once going down the road, and a gallon of an Arnold Palmer iced tea/lemonade mixture fell out, crashing to the floor, spewed its contents all over!)

Mike does all the driving – I have not driven the RV a foot this whole time. It isn’t an easy job, between the mountains, the curvy roads, or construction when we do get a straight road. While he is driving I look at the scenery, work on the blog, munch on snacks, paint my toenails, read, write postcards and make phone calls. When we arrive at the next campground, I go in and pay and Mike unhooks the Jeep. When he pulls into the site, he gets the RV in just the perfect spot for the jacks to level, (and we have been in some tight spots) and then proceeds to hook the water, sewer, electric back up. I unlatch the doors and take the soap and toothbrush holder out of the bathroom sink and place them on the counter.

It’s a system that works well, don’t you think?

From Mitchell we headed south to Sioux Falls and spent Thursday night there. That was a full day’s driving. Friday we had another full day driving to our current location – Kansas City, Missouri. We arrived here about 5 pm local time Friday night and spent all day Saturday cleaning the RV - this time inside. And we have a surprise to report from here in the next post!