Kiss me, I'm Corny

South Dakota was very fun and verrryyy loooonggg. The longest day of our lives. It is a day and a half later and we still have not recovered from all the fun we had. So, as a result you're getting short blurbs. It will still be fun, don't worry...

Here is Tommy enjoying his breakfast. He works out, so sausage and eggs the size of his body are a perfectly acceptable first meal of the day.

After breakfast we went to the Corn Palace. The World's only Corn Palace, according to the Mitchell tourism folks. We believe them. In the parking lot Marcie and Amanda parked next to a Honda Civic that looked just like Marcie's Honda. It too was from North Carolina. Corn Palace Twilight Zone!
Tommy wouldn't stop begging us for a photo of him in front of the Corn Palace. He is trying to look cool. This is all corn. Wow. They redesign the facade every year. This year it was dedicated to every day heroes, like cops and teachers. Very nice.

And they play basketball in the Corn Palace! The high school team and the college team. How cool would it be to go onto the NBA and say, "yeah, I started my career playing under a ceiling of corn."

Here's a shot of the palace in all its glory. That's a lot of corn. I'm sure if we had read the fliers about the palace we would know exactly how much corn. But we didn't. That's what the Internet is for: http://www.cornpalace.org/ Amanda got a super cool tee shirt here. It says "C is for Corn Palace." Marcie wanted the "Kiss Me, I'm Corny" one, but they only big sizes. Sad.

We also got yummy caramel corn treats (shaped like corn husks!) at the Corn Palace. Made for a nice snack before we headed into 1880 town a few hours down the road.
1880 Town is a town, well, meant to replicate 1880. (http://www.1880town.com/) Here Tommy learns stuff in the 1880 school house. Actually he probably isn't learning much because he's facing away from the front of the room and sleeping, we think. Slacker.
This is the point in the trip where Amanda and Marcie officially lose it.*

And we when say we lost it, we REALLY lost it. Lost it all actually, and that landed us in jail.

And eventually killed Amanda off.

JUST KIDDING! It was only $5 each to dress up in 1880 gear. And they let us run all over 1880 Town and take photos of whatever we wanted. A lot of people laughed at us. We aren't really sure why. Others thought we were employees of 1880s town and took photos of us. Little kids looked at us like we were insane, wait. adults did that too.

Here were are waiting for our coach to take off. (It never did.)

And here we are taking this cowboy for all he's worth, the wicked card players we are.
This is Saloontender Joe. We didn't get in a shootout in the bar so he liked us.

Tommy was so embarrassed by us that he decided to wait out in the car during dress up. You can see how annoyed he is here.But he forgave us when we took him to Wall Drug. (He had been seeing the signs along the interstate for 200+ miles, and since he's such a sucker for good marketing, he just had to stop.


And ride the Jackalope.

After about 8 hours of driving across South Dakota (that included our time travel back to 1880, though), we finally arrived in the Black Hills of South Dakota, not unlike Rocky Raccoon. He didn't go to Mt. Rushmore though, but we did. We even watched a video reminding us about our nation's history. During the video Amanda told Marcie that Abe Lincoln was born in Rutherfordton, NC. Fascinating. Want more? http://www.nps.gov/moru/

We also saw Crazy Horse. The monument is still years away from being done, but when it is, it will be HUGE. All of Mount Rushmore (the heads) would fit in Crazy Horse's face and hair. That sounds weird, but you get what we mean, we hope. Learn more fun facts, if you wish. http://www.crazyhorse.org/

* We are SOOOOO tired.