Wall Drug
The term Badlands should perhaps apply to the miles of sagebrush nothing leading from the verdant Black Hills toward Sioux Falls in South Dakota.
It should not refer to the amazing striated spires just off Interstate 90 that attract a million visitors a year. After all, this other worldly place was unique enough to be declared a National Park.
It was 104 degrees when we pulled off 90 and headed south toward the park entrance. As we approached the gate the terrain began to change dramatically.
After entering, we were driving amid the unusual peaks that form such an unusual landscape. At the visitor center, rangers tell of the significant fossil findings at this remote location. At the site, the Lakota tribe found large fossilized bones as well as sea shells and turtle shells, indicating that the area was once underwater. The fossil-rich area also turned up evidence of a number of long extinct mammals, including a type of camel. A digging frenzy began there in the 1840s after publication of the discovery of a large fossilized jaw of a "Paleotherium"
A number of animals and birds have been introduced (or reintroduced) so they can hopefully thrive in the park's more than one million acres. These include a large herd of buffalo that has grown to over 1,200. Also here are the endangered whooping crane and the black-footed ferret.
Another must stop in this section of South Dakota is a drugstore that grew and grew in the little town of Wall, South Dakota. Wall prospered in large part by beating Rock City to the punch in advertising its name far and wide.
The druggist Ted Hustead and his wife Dorothy came from Nebraska and settled in Wall (population at the time of 231) in 1931. They opened a small drug store. With business stagnating, Dorothy had the idea of hanging a Wall Drug sign on the main highway a block from their store. It promised free ice cold water. Locals and visitors alike began making the one block turn.
The Husteads, realizing the effectiveness of road signs, began plastering them as far away as foreign countries. Gradually, they expanded their thriviing business into adjacent space. It grew to a mall of sorts with a cowboy theme. There are several cafeterias with lines of customers always backed up, as well as a museum of cowboy artifacts, historical Western photos, beautiful Western artwork, shops of every sort, an 80-foot brontosaurus, and even a small chapel designed after one in Iowa. .
We were bushed as we landed at our Hampton Inn by the freeway in Sioux Falls. Still there was time for cards - Up and Down the River and 10s (Swish). No Hand in Foot. This game of frustration and triumph had gotten a little too competitive, and two couples traveling together round the clock for several weeks need a nice quiet game at this point.
Dining inside the unusual tourist attraction