Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.
Last Updated: September 14, 2026
The Badlands are almost exactly halfway through their existence. Water began carving them out of the prairie around 500,000 years ago, and at the current rate of about an inch a year, the Park Service expects them to be gone in roughly another 500,000. Everything in the photographs below is temporary. That is not a melancholy thought so much as a useful one, because it explains why the place looks the way it does — nothing here is hard enough to last.
Last Updated: September 11, 2026
Mitchell sits on Interstate 90 in the southeastern quarter of South Dakota, about an hour and a half northwest of Yankton, and it is known for exactly one thing: the World’s Only Corn Palace. That claim sounds like small-town bluster. It is literally true, and the reason why turns out to be the most interesting thing about the building.
This was the last stop of a long month — Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa and now the eastern edge of the Great Plains — and the weather had not finished with us. Sustained winds over 20 mph with gusts past 50, rain, and nighttime temperatures near freezing. We were still inside the country that produces spring tornadoes and we kept the truck pointed out, ready to move if we had to. That habit is the subject of its own post, Crossing Tornado Country in an RV, and this was the third campground in a row where it earned its keep.
[Read more…] about Mitchell, South Dakota: The World’s Only Corn Palace, Oscar Howe and a Thousand Years of Corn