. Contrary to some
beliefs, the place is not built from corn. It's built from brick, or some other
building material. It is, however, covered with corn 
. While there's precious little to recommend Dayton in and of itself, it does have the US Air Force Museum conveniently located nearby. Huge place - they claim to have over 250 planes on display, and I saw no reason to doubt them. If you're into planes, you need to see this place at some point.
John and I spent the afternoon there - saw two IMAX films of no particular merit (beyond the "check this out, it's huge!" factor) had a couple (Milspec?) Coca-Colas, and wandered around their two enormous hangars. There's a third (the R&D Hangar) that we didn't even get to, because, get this, we were Running A Little Late. Hard to believe, but it's true!
I took a bunch of photos of the planes on display, but since plane photos are somewhat of an acquired taste, I won't clog up this page with them. They're over here.
After we were booted out of the USAF Museum at closing time (5pm) we decided to head directly to Cincinnati, the home of the original Skyline Chili. John was not going to be denied his "5-way" any longer. He'd been thwarted the previous night by the overwhelming lameness of Dayton, and was now insisting that I drive him straight to the chili-place.
"So what the heck is '5-way'?", you might be asking. Take some spaghetti (no sauce), and then cover it with chili, beans, raw diced onion, and shredded cheddar cheese. Serve with a couple of 'coneys' (hot dogs) on the side. It's interesting, and not the sort of thing you're likely to run into outside of southern Ohio. One useful feature (for folks in the middle of a road trip): the constipatory effects of the cheese tend to nullify the 'explosive' qualities of the chili. This lets you drive the next 1000 miles without stopping every half-hour.
The original plan was to drive from Cincinnati to Chicago, and score a steak at Ronny's Steak Palace, a real dive that John & I like, even if nobody else does. When it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen (we were, as you'd guess, Running A Little Late), we opted to bypass Chi-town completely, and head straight for, well, as far west as we could.
Taking I-74 NW out of Cincinnati, we passed through the burgeoning metropoli of Indianapolis, Peoria, Des Moines, and Sioux City, Iowa, stopping only for gas, caffeinated beverages, and pickled wieners.
John had been doing all the driving since Cincinnati, but around the time we hit Sioux City, the Evil Ball of Fire had returned. This ruined an otherwise pleasant night, and robbed John of whatever stamina he had left, so we tagged up and I resumed command.
Somewhere in NW Iowa we turned on the radio (always dangerous outside of a major city) and listened intently to this pathetic program. A 'zany' DJ, who had the normally-desirable morning rush-hour slot, was desperately trying to get anybody to call him up and take a shot at answering his trivia question. The lucky winner (after an hour or so) won a Free Rental at some local video store. As you might guess, 'rush-hour' traffic in Iowa is comparable to 5am Sunday morning traffic on the east coast. Every ten minutes or so you'd see another pickup truck off doing something farm-related, and that was about it.
We finally reached South Dakota sometime Wednesday morning, hooked up with I-90, and continued west. Compared to Iowa ("damning with faint praise?"), South Dakota was wonderful, and semi-interesting. One great feature (for your increasingly-loopy been-up-all-night drivin' guys) was the triumphant return of billboards. And not just any billboards, but cheesy billboards for goofy tourist attractions. Now we're talking! Anyone who's driven I-95 anywhere near South-Of-The-Border is familiar with the type of hard-sell advertising I'm talking about. There are really only three places of any interest in South Dakota (Mitchell, Wall, and the Mt. Rushmore area), but boy, do they know how to sell them! And quite successfully - we stopped at all three.
(Editor's Note: in the following, click on the words for a hi-res 640x480 image. Click on the green dot for a low-res 320x240 version of the same image.)
Anyway, we finally made to Mitchell, SD, home of The
Corn Palace 1 . Contrary to some
beliefs, the place is not built from corn. It's built from brick, or some other
building material. It is, however, covered with corn .
The corn palace is a tradition dating back nearly 100 years. It was originally started
to fool farmers into moving to South Dakota, in the misguided belief that they could grow
corn there. "Look, we've got so much corn, we're decorating our buildings with
it!", was presumably the early marketing angle. You might be tempted to visit one of
the other corn palaces; but don't bother 
!
Each year, this clunky old town municipal center (home of the basketball-playing (and
animated-GIF-using) 'Kernels') is
redecorated with a stunning corn-mosaic, depicting the twin virtues of Corn and South
Dakota. Perhaps there's some sort of huge ceremony, where young virgins are
ritualistically deflowered by corn. Maybe not - whatever goes on, it's clearly not meant
for outsiders to know. We had entered an area where time
itself had lost all meaning 
.
So we called it a night.
1. For more info, here's their official website: http://www.cornpalace.com.
