More or less on a whim, late Thursday night while watching the last bits of the Democrat Convention, Josh and I decided to take the kids to South Dakota for the long weekend. After booking our hotel, and before hearing Obama’s speech, Josh fell asleep, while I stayed up a few more hours working on laundry and packing for the trip (while listening to Obama). The next morning I sent the kids to school with notes for their teachers asking them to excuse the kids to come home at noon. I spent all morning packing and preparing and then Josh arrived just before the kids to start packing up the van–which I’d hoped to have done already but hadn’t gotten to, so we left about an hour after schedule. 
Still, we made pretty good time despite numerous bathroom stops, and arrived at our first destination just in time for a scheduled dinner break. But before loading the kids up on McDonald’s, we drove further in to Mitchell, SD, to see the World’s Only Corn Palace. 
It was A-maize-ing. Truly fun earchitecture! 
We’d missed their big festival by a week, so the building was in the process of being switched over from its 2008 to its 2009 display. 
The kids just liked following the cornprints along the floor. 
Back on the road, I started to panic that it was going to be after midnight before we even got to our hotel. After crossing the Missouri River 
it got dark quickly and it was kind of eerie driving through vast dark nothingness, 
but we hadn’t been planning on switching time zones, so we made it to our hotel by 10:30 pm local Mountain time. 
