Cars and Corn

Today we checked out two tourist traps and enjoyed them both.

In Murdo, South Dakota, the Pioneer Auto Museum was a surprisingly large collection of antique, collectible, and strange cars. They also had a beautiful mineral collection, antique dental and pharmacy artifacts, a reconstructed one room school house, blacksmith shop, jail, bank, a homestead house and much more. It took us more than an hour to feel satisfied for our $8.50 admission but if you are ever in the neighborhood, I recommend it.

They even had a German vehicle designed by the famous WW II airplane designer, Messerschmidt. The small car can get 60 to 100 MPG an can rocket you to your level ground destination at a hair raising 60 MPH! That's faster than a horse and no nasty manure to pick up. Talk about green! Just wait till the new administration discovers this gem. I'll bet Messerschmidt stock will shoot through the roof as soon Al Gore starts driving one. Be prepared to order yours before the lines get too long.

After checking out the many cars, motorcycles, and antiques, we visited their souvenir shop. Their mounted jackalope was beautiful, but pricey. I'd like to own a specimen of this quality, but they are hard to carry on a motorcycle and make a poor front fender ornament due to their high cost and tender constitution. They also had some cheap, made in China, toy jackalopes. Don't fall for them. They are impostors. The real stuffed jackalopes are costly, but worth it. You get what you pay for. Never accept a made in China replica. There are no jackalopes in China. I've been there and all they had was stuffed dragons, and skeptic that I am, I'm not sure they were even real.

We drove another hundred or so miles and settled into a Motel 6 in Mitchell, the home of the Corn Palace. Improbable as it sounds, the Corn Palace is a large public building used for rock concerts, conventions, and any other use that requires a large building decorated entirely with real corn. Yes corn. An artist paints the buildings many murals onto roofing paper, then several hundred thousand ears of corn, grown in 13 different colors for the purpose, are cut in half and nailed in place; sort of a corn by numbers painting. It looks great and is a true work of folk art on a grand scale.

Inside the building a vast array of corn related souvenirs beckon the enthusiast. There were just too many things to illustrate so I've made a collage of some of the products; behold.

The town is rightly proud of their cash crop. Even the unpopular E85 Ethanol fuel can be found in most gas stations. the cost? $1.80 a gallon. That's almost a buck a gallon cheaper than 87 octane gasoline. Not a bad deal for the Flex Fuel cars that can use it, although I think E85 only gets you about 73% to 94% as far on a gallon, depending on the car burning it. Maybe they will work out the efficiency bugs some day.