South Dakota

We deviated from the navigation on the way to the South Dakota fair, and stopped at the MyPillow headquarters to visit the company store. Then more-or-less accidentally followed Route 14 southwest, driving through Mankato, Sleepy Eye, and Walnut Grove (the Little House on the Prairie route). Along the way we stopped at Minneopa Falls state park and hiked to a small waterfall, and also stopped at the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum. We ate Beef Chislic (South Dakota cubed & fried steak) that night.

The morning and day of the fair was cold and windy, but we pressed on with the help of some WalMart rain ponchos. The fair was small, but had a lot of things we missed at the Minnesota fair, such as a large rabbit barn, and several horses. The horses were all corralled, as there were no horse events that day. Something we hadn’t seen before is Stock Dog Competition, which was basically sheepherding. It was quite interesting to watch and a good excuse to sit for a while.

Between the weather and the weekday/first-day, the crowd was very sparse. I don’t think anything was running on the midway, and we didn’t see any outdoor shows take place. We ate a cinnamon Elephant Ear, Ribbon Fries, and some tasty Beef Nachos.