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Day 5
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Day 7
Day 8
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Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 5 - July 3
Mitchell, SD to Bloomington, MN
Miles traveled: 422
Local Music:
Kenny McMahon, Two parts Jimmy Buffet One part Willie Nelson.
.
Not many attractions today, it was more about driving.
Mitchell's world famous Corn Palace. AKA the worlds largest Bird feeder. It's in a state of assembly for this years corn palace festival in August, but thankfully, most of the corn mosaics were complete and they were basically just hanging fringe. Oddly, there was a dirth of corn based food here, and nobody had any fresh corn-on-the-cob. Local corn wasn't ready yet apparently. The third place I tried had sweet corn pancakes on the menu (made with frozen corn I guess) and I had that. Quite good.
North to Roslyn SD, and the Vinegar museum. Roslyn had a significant unswing in population recently, when I drove into town. This place is small. According to my tour guide Ethel, pictured here. The owner of the museum is a food scientist who works as a professional vinegar consultant. He watched the town shrinking as the kids grew up, moved away, and didn't come back. So, to get the place back on the map, he started up the museum, and more importantly the annual vinegar festival, which brings people from all over the country for a few days a year increases town population by over 1000%. This got them listed in the AAA guide books, and literally, put back on the AAA map.
Speaking of AAA, let me just report that joining before this trip was the smartest thing I could have done. I haven't needed any roadside assistance or anything, but having a AAA card gets your discounts practically everywhere. It's easily paid for itself twice over already.
Anyway, Ethel suggested I swing by the local ice cream shop on the way out and try one of the Tequila Lime Vinegar Milkshakes. It was actually quite good, tasted like a liquid key-lime pie.
In the words of the great Weird Al:
I parked the car and walked with awe-filled reverence towards that glorius huge majestic sphere
I was just so overwhelmed by its sheer imensity, I had to pop myself a beer
Yes, on these hallowed grounds, open ten to eight on weekdays, in a little shrine under a make-shift pagoda,
There sits the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Found a hotel. Started uploading. Blah Blah Blah...
On to Day 6
