Sheesh, I really need to finish writing about this road trip before it becomes a distant memory.

On Sunday morning in Sioux Falls, SD, my brother and I got up and went to my buddy Dave’s church – First Evangelical Free of Sioux Falls. It was good to see where Dave had come from, church-wise, and it seemed like a nice enough church. The people were friendly, and it seemed like your typical evangelical church in terms of its architecture and style of service: large, clean building, not a lot of decoration, service very sermon-centered. I’m not trying to find fault with that here; I just noticed it because it was quite a bit unlike the Anglican church that Dave goes to in Vancouver. Dave preached, and did a bang-up job of it too, I might add.

On our way to Rapid City (which is at the western end of the state), we went east instead of west for a few miles. The reason for this is that I had never been to Iowa before, and Sioux Falls is right on South Dakota’s border with Iowa. So we drove across the river and, predictably, we saw a “Welcome to Iowa” sign right next to a cornfield.

After taking a picture, we were on our way west on I-90 to Rapid City. Not too far away from Sioux Falls, though, we stopped in Mitchell to have a look at the famous Corn Palace. Every year, they decorate the Corn Palace, inside and out, with corn. Here is Mt. Rushmore made of corn:

And a few other murals inside:

My brother standing outside:

With all that corn around, I got the hankerin’ for some:

And then, we were on to the Badlands. From I-90, there is a loop that heads south from the highway, through Badlands National Park, and then back up to the highway. We took this loop, stopping along the way at various pullouts and the visitors’ center to take pictures. It wasn’t the best day for hiking, even if we had been interested: it was blazing hot.

The end of the Badlands loop brought us to Wall, SD, home of Wall Drug Store – and little else. We stopped at Wall Drug and picked up a few things, and then headed on to Rapid City.

Once we got to Rapid City, we checked into our hotel, had dinner at a ’50s-style diner across the parking lot, and relaxed in the room until it was time to go to bed.

• Travel