Day 29...Home of the Wall Drug store...South Dakota

First order of the day was to see the Corn Palace. There is more to Corn Palace than just a tourist trap. They redecorate it every year and have been doing it since 1900. Every year it has a different theme. The picture is from corn palace of 1907. It has all natural grasses, grains and corns. The Swastika , shown here, is actually an old Hindu/Native American/Asian symbol . It was used by many civilisations to represent good will, wellness and life.


Corn Palace from 1907
We drove west to Badlands National Park.
Badlands National Park is just that. Most of it looks like huge termite hills and the rain made some of the clay flow down , making rivers of clay and water. It was rainy and cold and muddy so we just drove though the park, no hiking. Even the harsh surroundings, support deers, rabbits and we even saw big horn sheep.



Onward to another tourist attraction with a twist. This is supposed to be the biggest drug store in America and it is BIG. It was started by a young pharmacist trying to make a living. After five years and not much business, his wife came up with an idea. " Let's put advertisements on the highway saying we have free ice water". Very soon few thirsty people came and few more and now the grand daughter in law runs the place and they pretty much own the whole town. It is fun , has lots of old American memorabilia and local folk lores.


This poster is one of many funny things there.

We are in Custer now. It is a small frontier town with old world feeling. People came here looking for gold and land and had usual fights with American Indians and almost wiped out Native Americans as well as the Bisons. Bisons are back to healthy population ( thanks to endangered species act) and Native Americans are big into Casinos.

Good night and keep in touch.

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Day 28......Home of CORN PALACE..Mitchell, SD

Sorry, I forgot to press the publish button last night :( So, here it is from yesterday and I will send today,s later tonight.
Happy mother's day to all the mothers who are reading this. This is first mother's day in 30 years that I am not with any of the kids. It feels strange but also says that they are all independent and grown up and I should be happy that I have done my job well. I am proud of all of them. But, I miss them.


This is Tent Caterpillar. Jim showed it to us last night. It is very destructive. He is going to burn it tomorrow.
We had a wonderful farm fresh breakfast early in the morning and then we said, adios to our good friends, hosts and their palace and drove west through the 10,000 lakes, Ethanol plants, farms with silos and wind mills. Our first stop was Cabela's store where Jagdish treated me and himself with coverall sun glasses. The store is amazing. Huge and has all sorts of stuffed animals ( I was told they are all real).

Outside Cabela's : JAgdish with his Coverall glasses

Minnesota is dotted with Ethanol plants and windmills.

We stopped at Pipe Stone National Monument. It turned out to be a real Gem. Took us many small roads to get there but once there we were quite amazed. It is very small but worth the stop. It is a scared sight for native Americans. Many tribes have been coming here to quarry the pipe stone that is used for making the scared pipes used for religious ceremonies. Even today , they only Native Americans are allowed to dig here and they use only old fashioned tools which takes them many years to get the rock with is buried under the over 70 feet of Quartz.
All the red stone is the Pipe Stone and the creek is very scenic.

We are in South Dakota at Mitchell, the home of Corn Palace. We just got here so have not seen the Corn Palace yet. Will report on it tomorrow.

Good night and happy mother's day and if you are not a mother: be nice to the mother you know, it is not easy to be a mom ( but is very rewarding :)

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Day 27 Fun with Jim and Becky in Viola, MN

The day started out very nicely. JAgdish and Jim went to Rochester to get the car oil and filter changed and the friendly mechanic not only checked and added the oil but also added wiper fluid and checked everything. He did not take any money and just said thank you for coming and have a nice trip. Is this Karma Kitchen stuff happening over in mid west?
Any ways, Jim drove us around in the Van and our first stop was Lark Toys. Amazing place. Lots of hand made toys for little kids as well as big kids, as you can see from the next picture. We also shopped for the marbles, they had so much variety that it was hard to choose from.The carousal ride for one dollar was fun. All the animals are hand carved and painted. I rode the dragon.

Our next atop was National Eagle Center in Wabasha. This is a cute city on the Mississippi banks and the Eagle center has educational talks about Eagle and had few big Eagles that they had rescued. This is the biggest Eagle habitat ( besides Alaska) but they almost went extinct in 1960s due to the use of DDT . The population is coming back now.

My picture is with real live Eagle and not a photo shop thing.

This is us at the banks of Mississippi. It was windy but pretty. We did have lunch at a local country place where the owner ( woman) had shot a black bear and it was there ( stuffed). It was fun to watch locals come and talk about farms and stuff.

We went for a drive along the river and I saw the signs for fireworks for sale. Jim and Becky were kind enough to drive us extra miles to get to the shop and we are well stocked for the fireworks for Diwali for this year. I am excited about this.

Back home, Jim cooked excellent Mexican dinner and then we went for a walk. This is their home from outside. The weather got really clear and wind died down so we had a pleasant walk and saw the house all lighted up at night....very cool.

So, Becky and I are saying good night for now. I will miss being with them from tomorrow but we will see them soon. Good night.

Day 26..Home away from home...Eyota...MN

We went to the museum in pouring rain in the morning. The little breakfast place had the sign, " no smoking on Sat. and Sun." They are trying to have people quit smoking slowly :)







The museum has lots of interesting stuff from all over the world and from old as well as morden times. Here is a sample of the paiting from Haity.

Here is the art from Europe. The big thing about the collection was the ORIGINAL painting and the frame of , Rafael's " Woman in Veil" . It was in a dark room with movie explaing the painting and the background and had a sign for no photograph and also, " very soft sounds only" I guess the sound waves can ruin the painting too.


After travelling on the country roads, making lefts and rights, we got to an unpaved road , my blackberry stopped reception and Gizmo announced , " arrived at the destination". With no house in sight and pouring rain, we panicked. Luckily, i was able to call Jim and he came looking for us...we were right there, in front of the house.

The house is an understatment. It is a palace, a transformation from the mud jungle I saw two years ago. Jim and Becky and the boys have new additions. 16 chicks less than a week old.
This is their great room. It is night time, I will have better pictures tomorrow. It is huge and has very nice feeling to it. The ecolors are warm and cozy. Jim did all the painting and planning and all of construction himself. We had a great dinner and the boys are sleeping now.


Becky and I are blogging together tonight. She is having fun and I am glad to have a companion.

Good night...


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Day 25..Where in the world is Saroj?? MIlwaukee, Wisconsin

We left the forests and lakes and drove south on the country roads along the Michigan lake. We passed beautiful little towns and the forest slowly gave way to farms and pastures. I noticed that farms in Wisconsin look smaller and more family owned. Right now , we are in Milwaukee, the biggest city and the capital of Wisconsin. It is old and industrial town and you can tell it is. Why are we here then? Good question. There are several gems in the city and we thought it might be nice to see a real city after almost a month. I do not think, we missed too much.




Our first stop was horticultural DOME. These are three domes with three different climates. It is fun and educational. We saw plants from all over the world. This is outside of one of the three domes.


One of the domes had the cactii and other desert plants.

This dome had formal gardens and was very pretty.

We are staying in the downtown Hyatt ( thanks to Price line) There is river walk right along the Milwaukee river which is nice and quite historic. Lot of the buildings and warehouses are converted into cafes and shops. The river runs right through the middle of the downtown.

Lake Michigan is on the east side of downtown. All within the walking distance. This is a picture of the Art Museum from the outside. We will see the inside in the morning. We drove along the lake and saw many amazing mansions with huge lawns, gates and lake fronts. We are told this is mostly old money.

There are few more interesting things to see and do but in general the town itself is nothing to write home about but is interesting to see it once. I noticed , more than half of the people smoke here.

Good night and sleep well.

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Day 24...Pictured Rock National Lakeshore Part 2

View of the lake from the Chapel Rock trail. It seems like everything in this forest is in a big rush to grow and mature. So many trees and so many flowers and shrub's on the ground. Jagdish and I argued about the length of the trail , if it was medium long or just medium (I did not have Frank and others to support me) so we ended up doing about 6.5 mile trail and saw beautiful vistas.

A river going to the lake and in the process making a water fall.

I had to do my mendatory dipping the toes in the water. I am happy to report that lake Superior ties with our Pacific Ocean (Bay Area) in terms of temp. and quality of sand.

Chapel Rock. It is amazing how the big pine tree is growing on seemingly no soil at all.

Chapel Water Fall: The picture does not do justice to the fall.

So, overall it was a wonderful day. the rain God co-operated and as soon as we came back it poured and it is going to be stormy tonight. Weather here is very predictably changable. Good night and thanks for listening. Send me your suggestions as we make our way back home.

Day 24...Pictured Rock National Lakeshore Part 1

We woke up to a threatening morning clouds but within an hour sky cleared up to this view from our hotel.







We drove 4 miles to the Miners Fall and the Miner's Castle in Picture Rock National Park. This was Karolina,'s suggestion and turned out to be a real gem. The roads and the trails in the park go through a forest of Sugar Maples , White Pines and many other trees that I do not know the names of. The spring leaves are making these views very colourful with all shades of green mixed with yellows and oranges.











The forest floor is covered with many colorful wild flowers. We saw all colors of wild flowers except red. I wonder why the natural selection discouraged red wild flowers. (may be I will check in to it with Dr. Google later) .







A short one mile trail brought us to miner's Castle on the shores of lake Superior. This is where all the pictured rocks are. Little geography: This area used to be a shallow, warm inland ocean millions of year ago. Later , the Glaciers and the rivers made their art work and the rocks have colors of all sorts of minerals.


Another view of the famous picture from this park.



Please continue to the part two for more pictures and description.