Day 4 Continued

We just crossed over into Minnesota. This is the second time zone we’ve crossed. We’ll cross the third tomorrow near Chicago. It makes my heart speed up just a little. We’re well past the gorgeous mountains of Montana and all the closer to busy cities.

Right now there’s just cornfields everywhere. We had an unexpected adventure today when we visited the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. The ONLY Corn Palace in the WHOLE WORLD. U___ and I looked at each other and smirked, “Well duh!” It’s basically a building covered with corn, but very intricately. Different breeds of corn are combined into mosaics of different important moments in history. Impressive as it was, I’m still bewildered of how anybody thought up something like this.

We really wanted to make time today, so we breezed in and out really fast, but I just couldn’t resist the doll museum across the street. I bought myself a little something and paid the $5 for a quick run through the museum. I asked how long it takes. They said if you read everything and look really closely, you can take about 2 hours. Others breeze through in 15 minutes. I covered the whole thing in about 10. Normally I like to take my time and really linger, but this trip I’m fully aware of just how far we have to go. Every minute off the road means another minute longer before we reach our destination(s) both for the night and for the week. We’re hoping that if we cover a lot tonight and tomorrow we’ll get to have a quick run south of Cleveland to our alma mater, Oberlin. So to get that done and make it to Pittsburgh by Shabbos, we really have to move.

In any case, I still enjoyed the museum thoroughly and don’t regret doing it so quickly.

Sadly, we also passed the exit for the Laura Ingalls Wilder house. I really wanted to go. And we agreed that if it wasn’t too far off the road we could do it quickly. But the exit number that had been mentioned on the sign for the house never came. I think it may have been blocked by construction. Too bad. Win a few, lose a few.