Vacation- Day One - How many more miles is it?

Just a new turn of phrase. It used to be "Are we there yet. But Aidan has decided that "How many more miles is it?" is a more unique way to ask how much longer we'll be on the road.
Tristan's statement of the day was "I wanna go to the beach." He's remembering two years ago when we went to Corpus Christi. I didn't have the heart to tell him there's no beach in South Dakota. As many of you know, Tristan has OCD and autism, so he repeats phrases over and over when he's unsure of what's going on. I think he said "I wanna go to the beach" 529 times in two hours. It kinda made me want to turn the car around and drive to Texas.
We drove from Kansas City to Mitchell, South Dakota. If you've never been, it's a charming little town, really. The big point of interest is The Corn Palace. It's a palace type structure; the outside is covered with murals all made of... wait for it... corn.

It's not as bad as it sounds. The town looks like Smalltown, USA, except that there's a big honkin' palace in the middle of town made of corn. Inside, they sell corn products and shlocky stuff advertising Mitchell's Number One Attraction.

We went to dinner at The Depot. Nice atmosphere, great food, cold beer, reasonable prices and great service. I had a chopped buffalo steak that was excellent. Even Ashley liked it, and she's really against type of red meat that doesn't say "Moo." The blue ribbon dish was the beer cheese soup. I'm going to try to duplicate the recipe when I get back. I would highly recommend The Depot and I will not hesitate to visit again when and if we come to Mitchell again. Thanks to Leslie for the great service and for finding my Mom's glasses.

Tomorrow, we'll visit The Badlands before ending up at Deadwood. But first, we're stopping at Wall Drug. It's a drug store in Wall, SD. I don't know why we're going there; Ashley just said, "Everyone who has been to Mount Rushmore goes to Wall Drug." She said they have a bitchin' jackelope collection.

Really? OK.

They started advertising in Iowa between Council Bluffs and Sioux City. That's not even the same highway. It better be worth the time. We're going there instead of Quinn to see a barn that houses the world's fourth largest beer can collection.