World's Only Corn Palace - Mitchell, SD

On our way across eastern South Dakota on Friday (we learned from Wayne at the Tractor Museum this is known as "East River" - east of the Missouri), we stopped for a visit to the World's Only Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

Front of the Corn Palace with the 2022 theme: "Under the Big Top"

This is near the end of the year for this theme - they will soon be dismantling "Under the Big Top" mosaics and replacing them with the new ones for 2023.

... but we got to enjoy the mosaics for 2022.

Mosaics down the side of the building.

Information about "The world's only Corn Palace" was provided outside...

Looking up at a couple of the mosaics -- you can see that some of the side parts have come loose (or been removed in preparation for the next year's?) and the plywood backing can be seen. In addition, some of the corn has been eaten by birds and maybe other critters.

The subject for 2023 and the artist's conception of the mosaics that will soon be created.

Information about the materials for creating the mosaics.

Inside the Corn Palace is a multi-purpose space. They were preparing for a concert to be held Friday night.

We went upstairs and out on the balcony -- there is a live cam at https://cornpalace.com/157/Corn-Cam

Carl posted on his family's WhatsApp communication group that we were going to be there - so we were outside waving. I did a screencap of us on the webcam while we were out there!

While the 2022 theme was "Under the Big Top", on Friday when we visited (and for the weekend, I guess), there is a carnival going on all around the area of the Corn Palace. This made finding parking for Gracie a little challenging, but we found on-street parking not too far away.

I was trying to convince Carl to get some funnel cakes since he has never had them... but he was strong and resisted.

This vendor would allow you to get all the soda pop you wanted once you purchased their stein (not sure how much the stein cost!).

This was my third visit to the Corn Palace, but Carl's first. We both enjoyed it!