Sprung up under the endless sky is Wall, SD. It's a small town that was no more than a grid of about eight streets. It's named Wall because it's located near the northern wall of the Badlands and the main attraction in town is Wall Drug.
Wall Drug was a pharmacy started back in 1931. The Great Depression and the isolation of Wall conspired to put the pharmacy out of business, but a husband & wife team came up with an idea to lure passing travelers off nearby Rt 90 by offering free water to the travelers. They put up billboards along the highway and the rest is history.
Wall Drug is now a full blown tourist attraction, a Disneyland on the prairie. There's western wear shops, bookstores, souvenir shops, a bakery, a restaurant, a water fountain play area, a robotic T-Rex, a gold panning attraction and more shops in a newly opened rear building.
We had a perfect roadside attraction lunch of burgers & fries in the midst of an impressive collection of western art. My favorite part of Wall Drug was the enormous display of historic photographs in the new rear building. The photographs dated to the mid 19th century and chronicled the hardscrabble existence of pioneers and Sioux alike. It also displayed photographs of (then) Colonel George Custer's Black Hills expedition. It showed photographs from that expedition next to current day photos. The landscapes looked the same except where a wagon train of 500 wagons once was, the new photograph showed a modern roadway in the same spot.
Here's Dylan with a saloon gal in the faux facade western town area and of course another Buffalo picture ...this one's stuffed however.
Drew in the western shop. Draw pardner! And Drew upon the mythical jackalope.
Molly too. How did I get her to do that? :)
Belly's full and bladders empty we beeline towards the Badlands....except for one quick stop to gas up and clean the windows so we aren't photographing through a bug juice glaze.
The Badlands are an eerie and beautifully eroded environment of buttes, spires and pinnacles. The erosion puts on a show of jagged edged peaks that look like the entrance to Mordor. But there's also softness displayed in beautiful round multi-hued humps that look like half submerged giant marble eggs.
The Badlands got it's name in the 1800's from fur trappers who called this area the badlands because of the complete lack of drinkable water in the region. As with everything out here in South Dakota it's also rich in Sioux history being the place they did their Ghost Dancing in a valiant but futile effort to regain their lost lands and way of life to the tidal wave of whites.
Standing in the midst of this eroded landscape feels like being inside a drip sand sculpture. It's nature's own Gaudi style architecture for prairie god's. :) If you go to the Badlands I recommend going at dawn or being there as the sun sets so you can get great photos. The mid-day sun washes all the color out of the land.
With the sun arcing down to California we started back to the Black Hills. We went south and took Rt 44 West. The Badlands loomed to our right as we drove. Eventually we intersected them again as they extended southwest across our path. Just past the park we took a slight detour and ducked into the town of Scenic, South Dakota.
The Longhorn Saloon was once proclaimed to be the most dangerous bar in America with plenty of bullet holes in the ceiling to prove it... and it looked it. Check out the signage on the building. Unfortunately the town was completely closed down the night we drove in. Not a person in sight. It looked like a ghost town although I'm sure it comes alive on the weekends.
Past Scenic we are surrounded by an approaching storm. The setting sun made silhouettes of the clouds to the east while to the south the sky was purple. It was vibrant and radiant against the spring-like greens on the fields and trees. Distant rain fell creating veils that reached down from the heavens and made a beautiful rainbow as the low sun reached in and touched everything. The west facing sides of every tree shone with a brilliant golden hue. It was gorgeous....then we saw lightning hit the ground!! We were happily taking pictures and video until we saw that. We all got back in the car!. We watched the rest of the unfolding spectacle through the front windshield like being at a drive-in.
Starving, we made our way into Rapid City. The city was bigger than I imagined it. It has about 60,000 residents. That's about the size of Utica, NY. It's the second biggest city in South Dakota and it wasn't a hick town. It was surprisingly urban & hip. We did a little poking around (this night and another morning) and found The Dahl Arts Center and a whole alley downtown dedicated to art (Art Alley) where anybody could, with permission, create art, write graffiti, create a mural etc... More important this night we found the Firehouse Brewing Company.
Molly & I had the Strong Arm Porter and the Brown Cow Ale. We had chicken wings, burgers, baked pasta with three cheeses and jambalaya but the piece de resistance was the Gorgonzola Ale soup! Wow. I ordered a cup. It was so good my son wanted a taste...he slurped up the rest of the cup! We had to order more, this time a bowl...and then another. Mmmm. If you're ever in Rapid City get yourself in front of a bowl of gorgonzola soup at The Firehouse Brewing Company.
Down the street from the brew pub is Prairie Edge. Prairie Edge is a retail, online and mail order gallery/store dedicated to Northern Plains Indian artwork and craftwork. The store is housed in a restored National Historic Registered building originally built in the 1800’s. It's beautifully done and the art work is stunning. I've always had a soft spot for native arts so I lingered there for a while sponging up the culture..Night had fallen as we left the city to go back to Custer State Park. As we were leaving downtown we were stopped at a railroad crossing. A freight train came plodding down the track. To our left was an empty two story parking garage. Under fluorescent lights three kids lingered in the summer heat. As the train rolled past two of the kids, girls, started throwing stones at it, laughing and throwing more. We could hear the metallic ting when the stones hit. The third kid, a boy, skateboarded around their parked Corolla indifferent to the target practice. That's what I was expecting from South Dakota not Art Alley and Gorgonzolla soup. It was a good slice of country fun in a city that gave us some good surprises, I'm glad we saw that.
