Saturday, March 19, 2016
Bowling around beautiful...Wall Drug and the Badlands
On Saturday morning, George and I breakfasted once more in the Days Inn breakfast nook. This time the hot meal on offer was sausage gravy, which could be ladled over toasted biscuits. It was delicious!
Then George and I drove to Wall Drug. It was not only a cold day, but also a snowy day in Rapid City. (As we are our breakfast we saw via the Lounge's TV - which was always tuned to the Weather Channel - that the next day, Sunday (the day we were to go our separate ways) would be bright sunshine! Typical!)
However, as we left Rapid City behind, the snow dissipated, although the cold wind certainly didn't.
"Where in the world is Wall Drug?" That's a well-known advertising slogan for this popular tourists stop on the outskirts of Rapid City.
Wall Drug puts out a brochure which explains its history.
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| Wall Drug and the Badlands brochure - chock full of info! |
I paraphrase some of the info in the brochure:
In December 1931 Dorothy and Ted Hustead bought the only drugstore in a town called Wall, on the edge of the South Dakota Badlands. (The town itself was called Wall because it was situated on the "Wall" - the edge of the South Dakota Badlands.) (Why do I keep referring to it as the "South Dakota Badlands"? Will explain later!)
This was a couple of years after the Depression, and there was no highway system across America at this time. Wall was in "the middle of nowhere" but Hustead wanted to own his own pharmacy (he'd graduated from pharmacy school in 1929) and had a legacy so could afford to buy the one in Wall.
Business over the first few months was very bad, as there were no outside visitors to the town. But Mount Rushmore was in the process of being carved, and the husband-and-wife team hoped that the influx of tourists that this monument would generate would help their drug store succeed.
Five years later, however, business was still bad, and Ted Hustead was ready to give up. But one hot July day, Dorothy Hustead could hear all the traffic going by on Route 16A, with absolutely no one coming into the town, let alone Wall Drug. She suggested that putting up signs along the road advertising ice cold, free water, would draw people to their store.
At this time, the Burma-Shave billboards were popular - a series of signs, each one with one line of a rhyming advertisement. Ted Hustead and a friend created a series of signs in the same manner and put them on both sides of Route 16A - and got immediately results as people came into the store for their free water. And stayed to buy ice cream and ask directions to Yellowstone National Park and so on.
Today, the original Wall Drug is sandwiched between several other stores in a humongous building. There's a book store, clothing stores, souvenir shops, rock shops, and in the hallways lots of "kitchy" things to look at like a mechanical fortune teller and an automatic accordion. You can also sit on a bench next to a dance hall girl or Annie Oakley.
In the Back Yard Mall, during the summer months, is a mechanical T-rex. Other large statues - without any mechanical works - are there year round.
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| Me standing beside a giant jackalope |
The huge Wall Cafe (with seats for 530 people at one time!) is jam-packed with artwork as well as good, inexpensive food.
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| Wall Cafe |
And just because I am obsessed with minutiae, here's three scans of the Cafe menu, with prices current as of March 20, 2016.
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| Cover of Cafe Menu |
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| page 1 of Lunch and Dinner menu |
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| Kids Menu and Breakfast |
After leaving Wall Drug, we headed for the Badlands of South Dakota. It wasn't until later, when I did some research on Wikipedia, that I learned that "The Badlads" is a name for a geological formation, and that there are "Badlands" in other states as well.
Having said that, the Badlands of South Dakota are absolutely gorgeous. They are protected in the Badlands National Park.
Here's the description of this geological formation from Wikipedia:
Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. They are characterized by steep slopes, minimal vegetation, lack of a substantial regolith, and high drainage density. They can resemble malpaís, a terrain of volcanic rock. Canyons, ravines, gullies, buttes, mesas, hoodoos and other such geological
forms are common in badlands. They are often difficult to navigate by
foot. Badlands often have a spectacular color display that alternates
from dark black/blue coal stria to bright clays to red scoria.
The interesting thing about the Badlands is that they don't rise up like hills, they are actually below your feet.
George drove us on the Badlands Scenic Loop, about 20 winding miles through the Badlands to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center (where I picked up three tokens!)
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| The Pinnacles overlook |
Note how far down from the road this overlook is. In driving along the scenic loop, we're going down, down, down.
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| Each of the overlooks had a sign explaining elements of the Badlands |
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| Picnic table at one of the overlooks |
During summer, with the sun shining, driving on this scenic route with glowing colors must be absolutely spectacular. (It was pretty impressive on this cloudy winter day!) There are also two campgrounds within the park.
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| Bright yellow domes |
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| An attempt to show that the Badlands are "under ground." |
The Visitors Center, constructed in the late 1950s, has an interpretive section and a book store.
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| That red Outback in the parking lot is George's |
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| Interpretative center inside the visitor's center |
We returned to Rapid City, had dinner at the Chinese restaurant adjacent to the Days Inn, and spent the rest of the evening watching
Jurassic World which George had brought along on DVD.
Sunday morning, we left early, each going our separate ways. I returned to Cheyenne, already making plans to re-visit Rapid City and other locations in a more leisurely fashion.
