Vance Family Vacation 2015: Fourth Of July---on the Vance World Tour

July 4, 2012 Our Biggest Day Yet!

8:30 A.M. Darwin, Minnesota. The World's Largest Ball of Twine (rolled by a single man)

We arrived at this very famous roadside attraction a bit early apparently because we beat all the other tourists there. We beat all the native Darwinians also it seems as the entire town, all 600 of them were noticeably absent.

Ok, and there it is- behind glass- because they don't want anyone to roll the ball of twine away when they are not looking. The glass made it much more difficult to get a good photo. Who knows what immediately struck me about the twine? Anyone? Yep. It is messy. Why did Francis Johnson roll up the ball without taking the time to get the tangles out? Ok so maybe the glass is a good idea because if I would have had access I would have unrolled the whole thing and started it again NEATLY.

As you can see we proudly wore red, white, and blue in honor of the day.

1:30 P.M. The Corn Palace Mitchell, South Dakota

I have to admit that I didn't know what the Corn Palace was until I visited and read the informative blurb on the brochure. The Corn Palace is over 100 years old (this is the 3rd one actually) and was originally used to display local farmers' bountiful harvests in hopes of attracting more people to the area.

The entire outside of the building is decorated with corn husks, corn cobs, grains, wheat, and various beans. Every year they change the theme and local artists spend the months leading up to the annual harvest celebration redecorating the palace. It was really kind of strange and pagan. It's like the whole town worships corn.

They have corn on the light posts and on the street signs.

Statues of corn on the sidewalks.

Peyton and Eli are trying to feed the corn statue pop corn, little cannibals. By the way, the temperature was 111 when we left, so I thought that the Corn Palace might become the PopCorn Palace.

And after we left we traveled through hundreds of miles of cornfields. We killed time by telling the boys stories about a farming community where the kids really took initiative and ran the town. It was such a popular story that there was a movie made about it- Children of the Corn.

Our next destination was to be the Badlands; along the way we saw a few interesting sculptures to break up the the trip.

5:00 The Badlands

I wish I could explain how beautiful the Badlands are, but honestly, nothing I could say or write would even scratch the surface. The photos won't do it justice because the vast expanse cannot be adequately appreciated in a two dimensional form. Doug and I were so taken aback by what we were seeing we couldn't stop saying "Wow, this is beautiful. This is amazing!" Peyton promptly called us both hippies and said we belonged on Holston Mountain at the gathering. I'm not going to try to narrate each photo. Just enjoy.

9:00 P.M.- Wall Drug- The Largest Drug Store in the World

By 9:00 we reached Wall, South Dakota and Wall Drug. I have to say that we were pleasantly surprised by this little side stop. I had pictured a version of the World's Largest Truckstop- kind of industrial and warehouse-like but it was more like Gatlinburg under one roof. The town is set up like and Old West town and there are tons of little shops within the single building. What was most impressive was that they opened the grill for us even though it was after 9:00 on the 4th of July and I know they all wanted to go home. Honestly they were probably the nicest people we have encountered thus far on our trip. While it was anticlimactic after the Badlands, it was awesome compared to the truckstop.