You'll Look Up and Down Streets

For anyone who has travelled through the Midwest, I'm sure you are familiar with Wall Drugs.  As soon as you hit Interstate 90 the signs appear on the highway enticing you to visit their store in Wall, SD.  Wall Drugs started as a small local store in the 1930's.  According to AAA, in order to promote visitors to their store they placed thousands of billboards advertising free ice water to thirsty tourists.  The signs remain to this day and the store has expanded to be a city block long with various souvenir shops inside.  They also have an outside courtyard with cheesy displays for the kids.

We were not immune to the signs.  I think we were all looking for a brief respite from the road, and as there was also a Harley Davidson dealer in Wall we stopped to explore.  Wall certainly lived up to the hype.  It was a quintessential tourist trap but was quite fun.  I took many pictures of the kids posing with various statues.  We also found the necessary South Dakota golf and baseball for the boys' collections.  Rich found a cool new Harley shirt as well. 

It was now time to complete this leg of our journey.  We piled back into the car for the last push to Rapid City. After checking in to the hotel we headed into the city for dinner.  Rich had seen an ad for the Firehouse Brewery so we opted to try their fare.  Their food was pretty good and I even enjoyed one of their beers.  Ian was impressed by the entertainment.  It was a couple singing and Ian thought it was neat that the guy could play keyboards, guitar, harmonica and sing.  After dinner we walked through the center of town.  It was only a few blocks long, but there was quite a few public works of art displayed.  Most of the restaurants have outdoor seating and since it was such a beautiful night they were are pretty busy.

Another successful, yet exhausting day.....tomorrow we hit Mount Rushmore!

(Maggie and Ian in front of one of the presidents in Rapid City.)