We seem to be waking up ealier and earlier! It was around 6.30 that I woke this morning and I just knew I wasn’t going back to sleep – Neil said he’d heard at least 3 trains pass by during the night but I hadn’t heard any of them – slept like a log! We were checked out and on our way shortly after 8am, but this time we had to go back east briefly before turning onto Highway 85 for the long trek south. We had around 3 hours on the road travelling through the vast green grasslands before we arrived at the border of North and South Dakota. This is the only time we’ve ever been able to stop at the side of the road and look at both “Welcome to….” signs in the same place!
Another half an hour south we arrived in Belle Fourche we we stopped at another of Neil’s fabourite “geographic” sort of places – this one is the Geographical Centre of the USA ( including Alaska and Hawaii). They had an excellent little museum and the spot is marked by a massive marble monument as well as the flags of all 50 states ( plus Canada, for some obscure reason??)
We continued on south passing by the Black Hills of South Dakota. We’d visited this area in 2009 and will be returning in a few days but for today we just dropped in to the area visitor centre to make use of their picnic tables for our lunch.
From there we started to head east at last, and for the next 30 odd miles we were entertained by the passing parade of signs advertsing Wall Drug Store, the creation of a nebraska man called Ted Hustead . Ted openend the tiny drug store in Wall in 1931. Five years later it was still a tiny drug store. Dorothy, Ted’s wife, thought that the people driving past must be thirsty, and suggested that Ted put up a sign and by the time that he got back, thirsty tourists were lining up for their free ice water. They’ve been stopping ever since. Once Ted got it into his head that signs could draw customers, he went billboard-crazy, there are dozens of them lining the road for miles around. The business grew and grew and now it is a behemoth that occupies a whole block of the town that has grown up around it, just becuase it exists!
After seeing all the signs you can’t help but stop in. I’ve never seen so many souvenirs in one place before! We drank our free ice water and I had my 5c coffee. Wall drug is a mecca for tourist tat – and I loved it!
From Wall it was only another 40 minutes drive to the entrance to Badlands National Park. We will be doing a tour of all the main overlooks and sigghts tomorrow so today we made a beeling for the lodge. We are booked in to Cedar Pass Lodge and will be spending the next two nights in a cute little cabin. We sat on the back verandah for a while admiring the view up to the peaks.
It’s the end of the season here and we’d been advised that the restaurant would close at 6.30 so we went down for our dinner not long after 5.30. We shared the specialty for our appetizer, a taco made with native American frybread and buffalo meat, yummy! Then followed up with pasta, chicken for me and salmon for Neil. There we more than we could eat so we opted for the all-American custom of bringing our leftovers home in a box – to be enjoyed tomorrow for breakfast!
The view of the peaks as the sun went down was wonderful. It was so peaceful to sit out the back of our cabin and listen to the crickets, and watch the wild rabbits coming out to nibble on the grass.
Hopefully it will be a nice peaceful, quiet night.
