After the Willow Creek Dress project in Wyoming was done, I began traveling again, roadtripping in my van through South Dakota to Minnesota. I passed Sturgis during their biker fest, so I saw my share of bikers, passing and waving to me on the road with signs like “Sturgis for Bust” strapped to the back of their hogs. On the way I stopped at the famous “Wall Drug” in Wall, SD, a drug store from the 1930’s which has taken over the Main Street of the small town and become a kind of surreal theme park. It had a t-rex that roars every 15 minutes, a 5-banjo-playing machine, a “creek” where kids can pan for gold, a pharmacy museum, a tiny chapel, walls of historic photos, a soda fountain, shops with western wear and fossils, and loads of other random weirdness. But my main destination was the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, which is a 114-year-old building covered with murals made of 200,000 ears of corn. There has been a terrible drought in the Dakotas and Nebraska, so this year the towers were not covered, and I met people who were comparing the weather there to the dustbowl of the 1930’s.
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