Chamberlain, South Dakota - April 25th to 26th, 2022
When you travel for long periods of time, you cannot visit spectacular places all the time. Going from one highlight to another can be exhausting in addition to being a long drive from one to another. It is nice to relax and just enjoy the little things in life. It also makes you appreciate the outstanding sights all the more. Chamberlain was one of those relaxing places on the way to somewhere else.
Monday, we drove the backroads from Pipestone in Minnesota to Chamberlain in the neighboring state of South Dakota. You can’t be in a hurry when you take the backroads. At one point during our drive, we found ourselves behind a house. A house was being moved by truck, and it took up the whole width of the road. We crawled behind them for a little while until there was a spot where they could let us go by. Even though we were not in a hurry to get anywhere, it was still a little hard to be patient at that slow of a pace, but we didn’t have much of a choice.
For lunch, we stopped in Wessington Springs for our picnic lunch. On Google Maps, Ann noticed a small tourist attraction located in town, the Shakespeare Garden & Anne Hathaway Cottage. The cottage was built in 1932 as a replica of the one in England. The cottage is very cute, but it was the wrong time of year to see the garden as nothing was really growing or blooming yet. The cottage was worth the photo stop.
When we arrived at the American Creek Campground in Chamberlain in the early afternoon, it was still windy and cold. However, that gave us plenty of time to head over to the laundromat just a couple of blocks away to get our laundry done. The wind died down enough to let us cook rice on our butane stove (paid link) outside for dinner.
In the evening, we took a stroll through downtown Chamberlain along Main Street. It is not a very large town, but it was a pleasant walk. There was a cute little playground with a stagecoach being pulled by little horses that the kids could “ride”.
Our camp site was right on the bank of the Missouri River. We returned to our Red Tail Lodge just in time to watch the sun set over the river. We had noticed lots of turkey vultures soaring around overhead during our evening walk. Now it seemed like they were all settling in for the night in a couple of trees in the campground. There must have been close to one hundred of them.
Tuesday started out cold, but then warmed up into the 60’s in the afternoon. In the morning, we walked about a mile up the path from the campground to Roam Free Park. There were nice views up and down the Missouri River from the park. We thought we would have a good view of the Dignity Statue at the I-90 rest area (South Dakota Tourist Traps - June 28th to 30th, 2021). Despite how large the statue is, we were too far away and it just looked like a small blob on the horizon.
Coming back down the hill, we stopped at the Akta Lakota Museum on the campus of St. Thomas Indian School. St. Thomas is a Catholic boarding school which mostly serves children from the nearby Lakota reservations. Initially the students were mainly orphans and the school tried to assimilate the children by banning their language, culture, and religion, forcing them to speak only English and to practice some form of Christianity. Starting in the 1970’s, the school started incorporating some study of Lakota language and culture along with engaging in inculturation of Catholicism. Some Lakota families send their children to the school as they struggle with poverty since the school is free for the students.
There is no admission for the Akta Lakota Museum, but they do take donations. We were disappointed to learn later that the museum is run by the school. The displays were informative, but we question how much input was from the Lakota people. It also seemed a little strange that one of the displays included artifacts from the movie “Dances with Wolves”.
After lunch back at the campground, we went for another walk downtown, this time for dessert. Main St. Cafe & Market fit the bill. It was a cute little café. The homemade cherry pie á la mode and the vanilla milkshake were very tasty.
The rest of the day was spent sitting outside in our camp chairs, watching people fish along the bank of the Missouri River. It felt good to be warm enough to sit outside for a change.
Now that we were rested and restored, and our clothes and bodies were clean, we were ready to move on. It was time to head for the hills, the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Check out our related video: Chamberlain, South Dakota
(Ann)