29 1/2th Pit Stop - The Corn Palace (SD)

Blog Post #39 - Written October 30, 2025

Pit Stop on July 19, 2025


South Dakota is a long state.... a long boring drive along I-90 between Palisades State Park and the Badlands. So we made a couple pit stops along the way (to make the drive even longer haha). First up was the world's only Corn Palace!  It sounds silly, and it is, but it's also this town's claim to fame and brings in the tourists and their dollars. So I give them credit for their creativity and gumption.  And the Corn Palace itself is actually pretty cool. They do some amazing artwork with all parts of the corn plant, and the sheer size is staggering. They have a different theme (and therefore different artworks) each year. It's pretty impressive. Definitely worth a stop if you ever find yourself driving through SD on I-90.  Much better than Wall Drug, which we also stopped at (lame, btw).

Here's some fun pics of Corn Palace:














The drive from Corn Palace to our next pit stop (Wall Drug) was so long and boring, even the older kids fell asleep.



As I've already stated, Wall Drug was lame. The origin story was cool and shows the owners grit and ingenuity, so good on them for that. But it's now just an overpriced tourist trap store with nothing really interesting or unique.
If you find yourself driving along I-90 through western SD and your wife drags you off the highway to Wall Drug, drop her off and then go check out Dahl's Chainsaw Art (pictured below) that's just one block away! Way cooler  :)

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