Little Camels

Since arriving in South Dakota, the dogs have started drinking even more water than usual. Last night I heard them getting up several times for a drink. Around the middle of the night, Clover let me know she needed to go outside. I took both dogs out. Raven did his usual quick stop, while Clover headed straight for the first patch of grass and immediately relieved herself. I’ve started calling them my little camels.

We thought we had timed everything perfectly to arrive at our next campground right at check-in. Then, after we’d been on the road for a while, Regis realized we were about to cross into Mountain Time. Suddenly we had an unexpected extra hour to fill, so we pulled into Mitchell to visit the Corn Palace. We took silly pictures of the dogs in town. In one photo, there was a Goodyear Tire place with huge tires and I took a photo with the dogs in front of them. It helps to get an idea of how big those tires are with the dogs in the frame.

The Corn Palace is redecorated every year with completely new murals made from naturally colored ears of corn and other grains. Artists create new designs annually, and local crews attach hundreds of thousands of pieces of corn by hand. It’s one of the few buildings in the world whose exterior artwork is essentially rebuilt every year. The first Corn Palace opened in 1892 as a way to celebrate the region’s agricultural success and encourage people to settle in southeastern South Dakota.

As we proceeded west we saw lots of sunflowers. There was one stretch where sunflowers covered the landscape as far as we could see. If there had been any safe way to pull over and admire them at 0 mph instead of 70 mph, we would have.

Road Trip Moments

Physicists talk about quantum entanglement. I have my own version: if you lay two dog leashes next to each other, they will immediately become entangled.

Every time we walk past the fire pit at our campsite, Clover has to inspect it. There aren’t any cigarette butts in it, but she seems convinced that could change at any moment. Hope springs eternal.