Day 29: Wall Drug and Corn Palace

Day 29 was July 11, 2009. We began in Mount Rushmore and headed for Wall, SD, home of the infamous Wall Drug. You may have seen bumper stickers that say things like “Where the heck is Wall Drug?” or perhaps “Wall Drug: America’s Favorite Roadside Attraction.” Wall Drug is actually most famous for being a haven for travelers in the 1930s on the way from Mount Rushmore to Minnesota. The drug store offered travelers free ice water. It also runs a pretty enormous billboard campaign similar to the old Burma Shave signs, but not only in the Wall or even South Dakota area, but nationally and INTERnationally. Here are a few of the ones we saw on the way there.





Wall Drug was founded by Dorothy and Ted Hustead in 1931. It is one square block of tacky souvenir shops, restaurants, boot stores, books, and super weird attractions. For example, there were an inordinate number of animatronic cowboy musicians. I don’t remember what this guy was all about, but he was really creepy.


This was a cowboy band that Dave loved.


He especially noted that this guy was playing a relatively nice Harmony guitar.


The stores are mostly connected to each other by doorways and a few hallways run through the center of the building.


At one point, we found this great jukebox that, instead of playing a recording of a song, actually played the song on instruments. We scrolled through a digital listing of songs and chose a couple that we thought would be fun. The first one was a childhood favorite of mine called "The Battle of New Orleans." Unfortunately, the banjo and the guitar were painfully out of tune, so the song was almost unrecognizable. The second one we chose was Benny Goodman’s "Sing, Sing, Sing." That used a much wider variety of instruments, so it was much better.


As we were wandering outside looking in the windows, we found this weird little display of wildlife dressed in cowboy outfits.



Wall Drug also provided a fairly nice chapel for travelers.


I was pleased to find the gigantic jackalope statue in Wall Drug’s big backyard.


This is David with his papoose.


This is me on my tiny white horse.


Wall Drug also features an animatronic T-Rex that does very little but blink.


Every twelve minutes, smoke would shoot out, his eyes would flair up, and he would roar loudly for about 30 seconds. Small children started to cry, but older children would laugh hysterically at the ridiculousness.


David found a new friend.


We had a delicious lunch while we were at Wall Drug, too. Dave had a hot roast beef sandwich and a homemade donut. I had a hamburger. Dave raved about the donut. I thought it looked like a week-old hockey puck, but Dave claimed it was a delicious cake donut.


This was the second animatronic cowboy band.



It could not have been creepier than this.


Wall Drug’s entry in the Poor Punctuation Hall of Fame.


After about an hour and a half of this nonsense, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to go. As we left, we spotted this giant dinosaur which greets visitors coming from the east to Wall Drug.


After driving for several hours, we reached lovely Mitchell, South Dakota, which is considered to be in the Great Plains, rather than the Black Hills. Mitchell is a small town that boasts, among other things, the Corn Palace.

Built in 1892 as a place to showcase the corn growing industry, the Corn Palace features huge murals made of corn and prairie grasses on its outer walls. Every year, a different theme is presented on the Corn Palace’s walls.




This year (2008-2009), the theme is America’s Destinations.





Many of the locations featured have been highlighted in this very blog.







Across the street, we found a Corn Palace gift shop that was guarded by Zeke:


This model shows how the corn designs are created. A template is drawn with codes that correlate to different colors and types of corn and grasses. Then, the design gets filled in like a color-by-numbers painting.



Inside the Corn Palace is a convention center that also offers a gift shop. Around the room are other corn decorations that are permanent installations.




Bearded Dave was impressed by the incredible number of corn-themed items available in the gift shop.


We had to get a little silly here. Just a little.



Inside the halls of the Corn Palace was a terrific display of original artwork designed by native American artist Oscar Howe over his 28-year career with the Corn Palace.




As we drove out of Mitchell, we spotted this sign on the side of a generic building.


We drove one more hour to Sioux Falls, SD, where we ditched the KOA in favor of Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park. Yes, you read correctly. When we arrived, it was about 11:00 and the joint was jumping. So much for quiet hours after 10 pm. There were lots of groups of loud, drunk people sitting around campfires. One group near us was listening to their super-bassy car stereo with the doors open until close to 1 am. This was particularly irritating because there’s no one on site who works there after 10 pm, so who can you call about this? No one. Apparently, the cops came through at one point, but that’s all I know.

Early the next morning, at about 5 am, there was a most spectacular thunderstorm. Rain poured down and lightning lit up the sky. We were safe in our van with the diaper on the back, so we could look out at the storm without getting wet.

At around 6 am, once the storm had ended, I got up to go to the bathroom and found the drunk people severely upset because they had left all their shit outside. The girl was throwing all of their food in the firepit and all their blankets in the car. She was quite put out. I giggled quietly to myself—kharma is such a great thing.