South Dakota - Day 20 - De Smet, Woonsocket & Mitchell

Mitchell KOA, Mitchell

Friday, 20 August 2021

I hated to take the dogs out for the first walk because it was pouring rain, with thunder and lightning.  I knew the dogs wouldn’t like it any better than I did, but it’d been more than 10 hours since they’d last been out and I figured they’d better go, rain or no rain.

Of course, when we got back to the RV, Gracie refused to go inside.  Dexter was already in there, sensible dog that he is, but she and I were standing in the pouring rain, with pyrotechnics going on, and she’s refusing to get in.  I was hampered in trying to make her, partly because she was 50 pounds of reluctant wet dog and partly because I wasn’t ready to close up my umbrella just to manhandle her.  She finally got in.

She does this from time to time and I still haven’t figured out why.  Yes, she’s more often reluctant when there’s a greater distance from the ground to the first step, and I’m mindful that she’s an old dog and has arthritis.  But at other times it’s obvious that that has nothing to do with it.  I’ve tried not letting my impatience or irritation show up in my voice – in fact I’ve tried actually not being impatient.  I’ve tried to come up with standardized language for each RV entry so this doesn’t sound to her like a special occasion.  I’ve tried to be sure she gets nothing but ordinary care – no recriminations, for instance – once she’s inside.  Treats don’t work with her – she’s not food oriented and never eats when she’s upset.  Nothing has stopped these little episodes.  Just every now and then, she refuses to get inside.  And today, with the lousy weather, I was ready to clobber her before she finally agreed to get in.

today's route

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I drove back to De Smet, “Little Town on the Prairie,” remember?  Where the author of The Little House On The Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder, lived with her family in the late 1800s.  I was discouraged from taking the offered tour of various sites connected with her by the $14 charge – no discount for seniors.  And I can see, by looking closely at their website, that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, even if I’d wanted to shell out.  I never read any of those books, so I wouldn’t have understood any of the references – because apparently the houses and locations around town are identifiable to readers of her books but Greek to someone like me.  I think my sister read them, but somehow they passed me by.

Still, I figured I was in the neighborhood so should at least drive by.

The sign says "Gift Shop," but I think this was the original house
built by "Pa" Ingalls 1887-1889.  I think the gift shop is in the rear.

The sign says "Surveyors' House" and is apparently mentioned in book #5.
The sign also says it was the "Home of the Ingalls family 1875-1888."
I guess this is where they lived until Pa built the house.  These 2 buildings 
sit side-by-side now - readers of her books may know if they did then too.

The sign says "De Smet's First School," though I can't read the dates underneath.
The website says Laura and her sister attended school in this building.
It now sits behind the 2 homes.

The rain had stopped from early this morning but the sky was still very gray and heavy, and I had a hard time getting these photos light enough that you could see them, without washing out so much color there was no image left.

I drove around town a bit and stumbled on the county courthouse.

Kingsbury County Courthouse 1898

The courthouse wasn’t built until quite some time after the Ingalls family got settled here, which certainly makes them early to the party.

Even the local Masonic Lodge was earlier, with a date of 1884 on the building.

Back on the road

I passed a herd of about 30 cows tightly packed together in a field.  I think this is the 2nd time I’ve seen such behavior, and it just looks odd.  They bunch themselves so closely together that I can’t tell where one cow ends and another starts.  I think I remember Temple Grandin saying something about pressure making cows feel better when they’re agitated – more secure, maybe.  If so, I guess when I see these tight bunches, what I’m seeing is group therapy.

I passed through some small farming towns: Iroquois, pop. 266 – “Small Town, Big Dreams;” Cavour, pop. 114 – “Home of Michael Fitzmaurice, Medal of Honor.”  Based on the Wikipedia account   https://en.wikipedia.org/Michael-John-Fitzmaurice  he certainly deserved the award.  He was serving in Vietnam.  Oddly, an episode of NCIS had a character who was being vetted for a Medal of Honor for circumstances similar to those of Specialist Fitzmaurice.  Maybe he was their inspiration.

I was having to fight a very strong crosswind, a leftover from the morning’s storm, I guess.

Roads all over South Dakota have lots of anti-abortion signs.

After these small towns, I crossed the James River yet again and came to the big city of Huron, pop. 12,592, “Fair City,” they call themselves.  This is where they have the State Fair each year, and I’m sorry to report that the fair this year doesn’t start until August 31st, when I’ll be ready to leave the state.  Too bad.  I'd've liked to have seen it.

Huron has a nice city park, including a campground which I’m sure will be full in a couple of weeks.  The dogs and I took a walk here.

I passed a sign in town saying, “School Starts August 23 – Resistance Is Futile.”  Trying to figure that one out kept me occupied for quite a few miles down the road.

Woonsocket

I’ve been to Woonsocket in Rhode Island so I wanted to visit the Woonsocket here in South Dakota.  With a population of 655, they call themselves the “Town with the Beautiful Lake.”  I guess the lake they’re referring to is the small lake/large pond that's right in town, across the street from the Sanborn County Courthouse.  The courthouse isn't a remarkable building and I couldn’t get a good angle on it, I won’t show it here.  I was surprised a town this small would be the county seat, but a look at the map showed me Woonsocket is the largest town in the county.  The lake has a nice duck sculpture at the edge.

I saw 2 swans on the edge of the lake.  I didn't get a good look at them so don't know which species they were, but the bird book says no swan species are supposed to be here, so who knows.  I had to look closely before I was even sure they were real.

Back to Mitchell

From there I took a county road past crop fields, cows, horses, hay bales.  I passed the town of Mt. Vernon, pop. 462, and came back to Mitchell.

When I was here before, the roads were all torn up around the famous Corn Palace, so on this visit I tried again.  The construction was finished, but there was still a lot of traffic.  The Corn Palace is Mitchell’s only claim to fame - they tout it shamelessly and it does seem to be worth seeing.  The designated parking for RVs was 3 blocks away, and I didn’t want to have a hike like that while leaving the critters behind.  Instead I just tried to get photos of the outside.

It's a palace, after all, so of course it has turrets.

It’s immediately next door to City Hall, which likely accounts for some of the traffic I kept finding in the area.

The World’s Only Corn Palace was built in 1892 as a way to tell the world that South Dakota had a healthy agricultural climate.

There are murals on both sides of the entrance.
"The Palace is redecorated each year with naturally colored corn
and other grains and native grasses," per their website.

A parked delivery truck blocked my view of the front right side.

These photos don’t show the other hazard, which was tourists everywhere, taking photos just like I was.

More murals on the side of the building.

And a block away:

Carnegie Library, built in 1902 of local stone. 
The dome is painted with a mural by a Native American artist as part of the WPA program.
Titled “Sun and Rain Clouds Over Hills,” it was inspired by the drought
and Depression in the 1930s and expresses a prayer for rain and fertility, 
according to the Carnegie Resource Center.

Heading east from town, I crossed the James River once again and got back to the same campsite I’d had a couple of weeks ago at this KOA.