Wall Drug, Wall, South Dakota

Wall Drug was the only place that I absolutely insisted upon stopping at on this trip, because I knew it was just right off the highway.  Needless to say once you leave Rapid City, you are constantly reminded to stop there due to the many, many clever billboards along the way!  I started to shoot them but there were just too many!

On the way to Wall.

They really do sell coffee for .05 cents.

Jackalope heads.  The jackalope joke is well known in the mid west and western states.

We had lunch here.  I had a bison burger and Russell had the lunch buffet.

Inside the main building.

Fortune Teller Pappy

There's even a small chapel.

Russell had so hoped to see a live buffalo along the trip, but this was the best we could get.

In the mining company building, they had a replica of a water sluice.  You could buy a bag of dirt with 'treasures' inside, shake the dirt into the sluice pan and shake it out under the water of the sluice to reveal the pretty stones and (fake) arrowheads.  We came away with a nice sack of them!!!

Here is the obligatory, "Badgers?!  Badgers?!  We don't need no steenking badgers!"  joke

Wyoming to South Dakota

We'd stayed in Gillette, Wyoming on our 2nd night on the road and our 3rd day found us traveling through the rest of WY and well into South Dakota.

I wish we could have taken the time to see things like Devils Tower National Monument, which most people recognize from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" as the mashed potato mountain.

But at least we could see it in the distance so that counts.

Wyoming

Not sure what these fences are for, but we saw lots of them and if I had to guess, I'd say they had something to do with snow control.

Entering South Dakota.

The Black Hills in the Deadwood/Sturgis area, so named because of how dark the pine trees look on the hillsides.

Black Hills National Cemetery.

No time to stop at Mt. Rushmore or Crazy Horse monuments either.

So I got this amusing postcard instead.  This one really 'cracked' us up.  Now Russell jokes that he won't go back to see Mt. Rushmore unless they put pants on first.  lol  

Wyoming

I was digging this huge 'Bucky Fuller' geodesic dome.  Or as we called it, the giant golden boob.

These are rocks, but to me they looked like buffalo laying in the sun.

Russell quipped, "Look babe! They named a creek after you!" Funny, funny man.  I am sure he is not the only man to make that comment to their significant other.  ;-D

Part of the asphalt was red in this part of WY.

Saw several of these oil drilling pump thingies here and there.