South Dakota (part one)

Our first stop on our trip out west was in South Dakota.  We drove from St. Louis to Rapid City, SD in one day.  The drive was over 900 miles.  We stopped for dinner at in Wall, SD at Wall Drug.  I had never heard of the place, but James had - and we passed hundreds of billboards for it while driving across South Dakota.  It was incredible.  The area was like a small village.  The place began in the 1930's when a pharmacist opened a drug store, and it has grown.  There are places to shop, eat, and play.  I bought a couple of souvenirs there.

 The little house heads lined the parking area.  There were posts to to tie a horse up to, but there was no horses.

We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast outside of Rapid City called Coyote Blues for two nights.  The couple that owned it moved there from Switzerland, and they were very nice.  Our room was one of the smaller ones, but that was fine with us.  I don't think the house had air conditioning.  We had a ceiling fan in our room and we slept that the fan an of the window open.  Both mornings we were there, breakfast was very good.  We had fruit, granola, and yogurt mixed together along with something hot.  One morning it was an egg casserole and the next we had baked custard with fruit.  We had a day to see the sights, and we packed a lot into that one day.

We saw a number of these signs, but we didn't see any bighorn sheep.

We passed this lovely lake.  There were a few people here fishing and there places to have a picnic.

 We visited Mount Rushmore. We spent about an hour there, but there was a museum that we didn't visit.

On the way from the entrance to the lookout pavilion, we walked through this area.  Each state's flag is displayed with the state's name and date it entered the union inscribed on the column.