Bowling Around Beautiful...Wall Drug and the Badlands

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cover of Cafe Menu

page 1 of Lunch and Dinner menu

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!)

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.

Each of the overlooks had a sign explaining elements of the Badlands

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.

Bright yellow domes

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.

That red Outback in the parking lot is George's

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.

Bowling Around Beautiful...Devils Tower and Deadwood

Friday, March 18, 2016

Bowling around beautiful...Devil's Tower and Deadwood

On Friday, George and I went down to lunch at 7 am to the lounge in the Days Inn at 725 Jackson Blvd. This lounge/lobby area was apparently remodeled a few months ago - it's actually pretty small. There's the check-in counter, and divided by a low partition, the lounge with about ten tables, 5 running along the partition wall, the other 5 along the outer wall...  (There are no chairs for people to just sit in in a "central lounge" and there's a big screen TV located in the ceiling corner of the breakfast nook.)

In one corner as you enter the lobby are the two brochure racks. Head toward the lounge (more appropriately just a breakfast nook!) and there is a cart with a variety of coffee urns on it.

On the counter by the wall are the breakfast things. Cereal, milk, fruit, and a mixture for one hot breakfast meal. On this occasion, there was a container of waffle mix and a waffle maker. My friend and I had waffles, with butter cups and packages of maple syrup.

We then headed out to Devils Tower (note that "Devils" is plural, not possessive), which is an hour and a half away from Rapid City on I-90 to US-14 (depending on how fast you drive. It's 110 miles).

It was a cloudy day, and as we got into Wyoming there was a bit of fog (or just low-lying clouds as we were heading up into the mountains).

It was actually a fun drive, as the closer we got, the more we peered into the fog to try to see Devils Tower.

In the center of the photo is Devil's Tower obscured by fog or clouds...

George said that we were going to see Devils Tower if we had to go right up to it and touch it in order to do so.

However, the closer we got, the more we could see of it, and once we got to the Devils Tower visitor center it was revealed in all its glory.


It cost money for normal people to get into the grounds of the Devils Tower National Monument. However, my friend George is retired military and disabled, and a senior citizen, so he got into the park for free. (The pass is just for his vehicle, however).

Entrance to Devils Tower National Monument

George actually preferred it like this - he said seeing it through the fog made it look more mysterious, and since we could only see it when it was actually full size, when we were so close to it, rather than seeing it "small" and growing larger as we got closer, was more dramatic. I could not help but agree.

Snow flakes falling as we get closer to Devil's Tower.

Devils Tower and the debris field, hundreds of gigantic boulders that have fallen from the tower

The grooves in the basalt Devils Tower

The visitor's center is divided into two parts - the gift shop and an educational section.

Explaining how Devils Tower was formed

 I went into the gift shop and discovered that a new collectible for National Parks and Monuments throughout the United States are tokens (as opposed to pressed pennies - which I also collect.) So I started a new collection and bought the little booklet into which you store your tokens.

Front and back covers of the token album specifically for national parks, monuments and memorials

Tokens from Devils Tower and the Badlands

The token album opens up as a trifold, with slots for 30 tokens.

After warming up in the Devils Tower visitor center we walked up the path and halfway around the Devils Tower, marveling at it, and the debris field with its giant boulders, all the way. But it was cold and windy, and we decided we'd seen enough on that particular day!

On the return to Rapid City, we went via Deadwood.

It started to snow as we arrived in this city, nestled against the mountains:

Entering Deadwood

The road into Deadwood is steeper than you might expect so be careful of that during winter time or when it's raining heavily.

Lots of historic buildings, but the first thing you see is actually Cadillac Jacks - a casino.

Cadillac Jacks Resort and Casino

George and I went in there and played blackjack for about an hour. After losing half our stake (even though we played "correctly" - George used to be a blackjack dealer) we cashed in and went to lunch at another casino, the Tin Lizzie.

Cadillac Jacks had two live roulette tables, five live blackjack tables, and a hundred or more slot machines.

It was just too cold and windy to stroll around the city checking out all the historical buildings, so after lunch, we drove back to Rapid City, ate dinner at the Burger King adjacent to Days Inn, bought a couple of ice creams in waffle cones from the adjacent Coldstone Creamery (I got a scoop of chocolate and one of pistachio - though they don't call them scoops, very confusing, and the pistachio was awful, tasted minty so I'm wondering if they just gave me the wrong kind of ice cream.)

We spent the rest of the evening in our room.

Manifesto

Bowling Around Beautiful is both a bowling blog and a travel writing blog.

The name is a play on words.

"Bowling" refers to 10-pin bowling, which is what I do.

"Bowling" also is a term - little-used today, to be sure - that means "driving around."