These are some of the interesting things Ted and I saw and did on our MAT today.
We had Sunday brunch at Hy-Vee. There are no Hy-Vee grocery stores in St. Louis, but I have heard from Kathy and from another friend of mine that people flock to Hy-Vee for the Sunday morning brunch. Our hotel in Vermillion, SD was next door to a Hy-Vee store, so we walked over and asked a store employee about the brunch. We learned that you can either have brunch ($8.99) or order from the menu (the deli is right beside the dining room). Brunch is served from 6:00 am until 1:00 pm, but the best time to come is before 10:00 am. The woman told us that the Christians come after church at 10:00, the Catholics come at 11:00, and the Lutherans come at 12:00. The brunch was wonderful! There were pancakes, waffles, a variety of breads to toast, two kinds of eggs, two kinds of breakfast potatoes, sausage, bacon, at least a dozen kinds of fruit and just as many kinds of bakery sweets, plus almost any kind of non-alcoholic beverage you can name.
This is the Christian crowd. A stream of Catholics came in a little while after we were seated, and the Lutherans started appearing as we were leaving.
As we were paying for our brunch, I noticed scotcheroos for sale at the cash register. I’ve never known anyone who made scotcheroos except my college roommate, who gave me the recipe. They are one of our family favorites and whenever I serve them to people, I’m always asked for the recipe.
The size of these commercial scotcheroos makes one of my size at home worth $0.50.
We visited the National Music Museum in Vermillion after lunch. I’m going to post pictures of some of the beautiful musical instruments we saw in a separate blog, but I saw something familiar as we walked through one of the display rooms.
The front porch railing of my parents’ house had twisted iron posts like these. My dad and my grandpa (a former blacksmith) heated the metal and twisted it themselves. The porch railing at home had a twisted “S” attached in the center for our last name.
We’re in South Dakota, so you know what that means. Yes, Wall Drug!!!! The signs appear with regularity along the interstates. We saw the first one (“Wall Drug or Bust”) just north of Vermillion, SD. Wall Drug qualifies as pure South Dakota kitsch.
Too bad it’s 150 miles out of our way; otherwise, we could have this signature South Dakota experience on our MAT. We haven’t been to Wall Drug since our one and only visit in 1971. Do you think it has changed much?
The next stop was the Porter Sculpture Park (also coming up in a separate blog). From the park, there was a beautiful view of South Dakota.
You can see the clouds from the thunderstorms that are building over north central Iowa.
Farther down the highway, we stopped at a rest area. A sign informed us that South Dakota celebrates its history at its rest areas. The concrete tipi is a tribute to the native people of South Dakota. It doesn’t show in the picture, but at the feet of the tipi posts are triangles that form a thunderbird. The stone building is designed to be reminiscent of the South Dakota settlers’ sod houses.
There are floodlights around the tipi to light it at night. It must be a beautiful sight from the highway after dark.
We closed out our day with a quick stop at Wal-Mart. As we were leaving, we noticed a group of campers in a corner of the parking lot. One of our friends told us that Wal-Mart allows people to park their campers in the parking lot overnight, but I’ve never actually seen one. It was about 8:45 pm and there were a dozen campers settled in for the night.
Good-night, everyone.
More MAT adventures coming up tomorrow. We’re having lots of fun.