Wall Drug
Today we drove into South Dakota, and later in the day, we crossed the great Missouri Rover. They say that the Missorui is where you take off your John Deere cap and put on your cowboy hat, and it shows!
The eastern bank is all corn fields and trees, and as soon as you cross that amazingly blue water, you’re surrounded by cattle and prairie grasses.
Everyone who has gone through South Dakota in the past 70 years has seen the signs for Wall Drug, and I bet most of them have stopped. Wall, SD in a town on the edge of the Badlands, and has about 800 citizens. It also has the strangest, most entertaining and amazing “drug store” you’ve ever seen.
The store began as a small town drug store, and when the new druggest couldn’t get people to stop in during the Great Depression, his wife suggested they offer free ice water to the travelers going by. As soon as he put signs up on the highway, people began to stop. The next year, they needed 8 local girls to help run things, and it’s just grown and grown.
We stop every time we go to the Black Hills, enjoying the pie, the terrific western art gallery that lines the walls of about 50 different shops joined to the original drug store, and Lucas especially likes the life size T Rex that “lives” in the back yard, and comes alive every 11 mintues to roar at the crowd and swipe at people:
Lucas enjoys browsing the different stores, which include ones with toy dinosaurs, toy cowboy and indian weapons, rocks, western clothing, camping gear and just plain weird souveniers. There are so many different things for him to see and hear, and then there’s PIE!
We also camp right next to the train tracks, and Lucas loves to see the big engines come and go. He got to see two large deisels move a long freight train today, and was in his glory (what is it about trains?)
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