September 28, 2013.. We spent some time in Mitchell and enjoyed just going slowly for today. We love travel but it can be very tiring going day after day. Mitchell is the location for one of the big Cabela’s stores but we did not go there this time. We went to the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village. This tells about it from their website: “The Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village is the only archaeological site in South Dakota that is open to the public. The Village is an active research center and is a National Historic Landmark. Visitors to the site can see the many artifacts that have been excavated during the annual digs and they can tour the dig site itself in the comfort of the Thomsen Center Archeodome.”

After looking at the photos of the Corn Palace we made yesterday and the photos we made on our first stop there on this trip, we discovered the images on the building had been changed since our first visit. Some are still being created. We were surprised they had been changed or in the process of being changed. We learned that about 275,000 ears of corn are used to create the murals each year.

Tomorrow we plan to drive more miles toward home.

Here are a few photos I made in Mitchell:

The photo below is inside the archeodome showing the archaeological digs. The archeodome is a modern air-conditioned building built around the dig site. 

The following is from the Prehistoric Indian Village website:
The Thomsen Center Archeodome covers the open archaeology dig in the Prehistoric Indian Village and provides visitors year-round access. The 10,000-square-foot building encloses two full lodges on its exposed earthen floor. It includes a full laboratory, darkroom, computer classroom, and video conferencing studio. The site is the only preserved and protected archaeological site open to the public in the state of South Dakota.

One of the Corn Palace murals made from corn

A close-up of the mural above showing detail of the corn used in creating the image