On the road- at last

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Well it's been a long time coming, but at last I'm on the road! I left Wisconsin a couple of days ago, and for those of you I haven't been in close contact with, here's a brief recap. I spent the summer at my mom's place; what was planned to be a bit of fixing up turned into a total disposal of mom's home. She was diagnosed with colon cancer, and has subsequently undergone treatment. Coupled with all of her other health issues, she needed to be placed in a nursing home, and my brother(at 42) into his very first apartment. It was a bit of a process, but everyone is now settled in.
I am taking a very easy trip across the prairies, stopping to see all the things I used to fly by on my way home. I got into Mitchell early afternoon yesterday, checked in, and went to see the "Corn Palace". It's a large building that, since the 1890's, has been a showcase for all of South Dakota's grains, grasses and most especially CORN. Each year a committee determines a theme, and an artist (now a woman named Cherie Ramsdell) completes plans for murals on the outside of the building. In early summer, the geometric designs that frame the murals are changed, and in the fall, as the corn matures, the murals themselves.
The designs are laid out on black roofing paper, and crews are hired to fill them in with one of the ten different colors of corn. The cobs are sawed in half, lengthwise, and then nailed to the paper designs, which have been placed on the building. Inside the building you can see photos of all of the previous palaces, and buy gockle to your heart's content.
Today I'm heading towards the Black Hills, with a stop at Wall Drugs and a drive through the Badlands.
As I travel, I will be posting photos, etc. and am hoping to get a little more creative as I dust the cobwebs off my writing muscles.

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