We’re taking a little vacation out to Rapid City, South Dakota to see some friends. On the way, we stopped at Wall Drug. Wall Drug is one of my favorite American stories. So, you have a drug store in the middle of nowhere where it’s hot and you have a highway through the desolation. I know, let’s put up signs for hundreds of miles, telling folks they’re getting closer, and they can have free ice water! Gradually, I guess they expanded the schlocky crap they had for sale, and before too long, it’s a full blown tourist attraction. Now, of course, they have a giant jackalope.
Anyway, I highly recommend Rapid City and the area for any of those with younger children. We have the added bonus of having some friends of the family who moved from Lafayette to Rapid City, but in general, you have the big one: Mount Rushmore; but there are also plenty of other attractions and reasons to come. Custer State Park, caves, good hiking, lakes, beautiful weather, road side attractions, Reptile Gardens. During the summer, the days are generally hot, and the nights are cool. It’s just beautiful out here.
It’s a bit of a haul to get here though. I love driving through the night – you can cover an immense amount of ground with the rest of the family sleeping. I think it was about 1,000 – 1,100 miles from Lafayette, and we were able to do it in about 17 hours; maybe 18 with a stop for dinner and breakfast at Wall Drug.
I have a number of extra hard-drives on my home PC — the J:/ drive is named “Jackalope”
In the late 80’s we did a family car trip to Northern California and Wall drug was one of our stops. Besides national parks, we tried to hit all the tourist traps and Wall Drug was pretty fun. Do they still put those big green “I’ve been to Wall Drug,” stickers on your car while you’re inside?
No, they give the stickers away, but they don’t put them on the car. I got a little “___ miles to Wall Drug” placard that I intend to fill out and put up in the basement.
I was wondering about that. Back in the day they’d put them on with zip ties, but that was back when most cars had huge chrome bumpers that weren’t integrated into the body. I also loved the benches where you could have your picture taken with the cowboy and barmaid figures who were sitting on them.