Today we drove across South Dakota and stopped at a few unique places.  The first one was Wall Drug store.  Only, it isn't A store...it is several stores within a store that takes up a whole block.  For those of you who have been, it is similar to South of the Border but nicer.  It had some funny things, like a bit jackalope you could sit on and a stage coach you could pretend to drive (in the spirit of all the silly pictures, Andrew and Ally posed both places).  After Wall, we made it to the Corn Palace.  Every year, the outside is decorated with murals all based on some theme.  The murals are made out of corn, wheat and some grains.  Inside, there are pictures and murals from past years.  Of course, Rob purchased a huge bag of popcorn there! Our last stop was the most...let's say interesting.  I read an article about a sculpture park in Montrose, SD right off I-90.  Since we would be passing right by, we decided to stop.  We had a little trouble finding it (there were no signs and we turned the wrong way off the interstate).  So when we got there, it was about 8:30 pm.  The sign said open 7 am -8 pm but since it is entirely outside, I thought we should take a chance and head down the dusty, gravel road.  As we got closer, we could see a trailer and shed with a man and dog sitting out front.  Let me stop here and say at this point, the sun was beginning to set just slightly, but Rob was feeling more than slightly uneasy.  He got out to speak to the man, who was the sculptor.  He said we were welcome to come in.&

 Wall Drug

Andrew and a new friend at Wall

Corn Palace

This is the welcome you get entering the sculpture park

nbsp; He asked where we were from and after telling him, I told him that I had read an article about his place. He asked me what newspaper and a few other questions. Rob said he needed to use the bathroom and he replied, "I have a port a potty!" Rob said it was okay, the RV has one; to which he replied, "It's clean!" In reality, Rob wanted to go back and lock the RV. (still was feeling uneasy!) All of the sculptures are made out of metal, most left over junk, that he has welded into sculptures.  We were the only people there; no one else was remotely close by.  He showed us the path to walk through and let us pet his dog.  Many of his sculptures were a bit odd.  You started out by walking down Buzzard's Way, which ahd all vultures in various positons above our heads.  The biggest and most notable of all the peices is a 60 foot tall bull's head.  There also happened to be cattle grazing throughout the whole area.  As we started to walk, many of the cattle ignored us but several watched us and even began to come toward us.  Then one started running away.  It was a little odd.  Mixed with the odd nature of his sculptures and the fact that the sculptor put on his large welding gloves, everyone began to feel a weird feeling.  But the sculptures really were interesting. On the way out, we signed the visitor's book and Rob realized there had been several people all day.  But he still was ready to go.  As he said in the RV, he thought he put on the gloves to kidnap or take us hostage!! I said, "Lots of people come and he's had artucles written about him and his artwork." To which he replied, "A psycho can go off at any time, no telling." But once we were safely away, he did admit it was a cool place to stop.  (Also, the sculpor told me that normalyl there are no cattle roaming around; SD is in the middle of a drought and his neighbor needed some more grass for them to graze so he let them in. I really think if we got there when other people were there, or there were no cows eyeballing us or it the sun wasn't setting, we would have had a diffeent initial feeling.) I'm posting some pictures now, but if you want to see more of his work (we didn't take pictures of any  of the really odd ones, google Porter Sculpture Park.)

Ally by a pink dragon

One of the funny sculptures