Further On Up the Road

Goofy roadside attractions are one of the things that makes our country great. They are kitschy. Cheesy. Sometimes disappointing. Other times, surprising. Always a lot of fun. You should be required to stop at at least one, on every road trip.

The aptly-named 'Skeleton Walking Dinosaur'

South Dakota, for some bizarre reason, seems to be flooded with them. They are everywhere. Or maybe it just seems like they're everywhere, because South Dakota is so vast and wide open, and there's really nothing else to do. Anywhere. Just roadside attraction after roadside attraction. And they all seemed to be old. Most of them had been around 50 or more years. Some looked like they hadn't been updated once. Others barely looked open. Every few exits another one popped up. Prairie Dog Town. Reptile Garden. Flinstone's Bedrock City. Perhaps they all just existed in an attempt to cash in on the 3 million visitors who roll into Rushmore every year. There were Dances With Wolves Movie Props. The 1880 Town. (not to be confused with the entirely different) 1880 Cowboy Town. They were everywhere.

It's easy to figure out which ones you want to stop and visit, because they all share one common approach. Massive billboard campaigns. Their signs dot the landscape as if they were a native plant, or state tree, common to the area. They bludgeon you over the head with their repetitiveness. By the time you reach their appropriate exits, you feel like you HAVE to stop. So, we did just that.

First up was the impressive, and well advertised Wall Drug Store, in Wall, South Dakota. What started as a small drug store over 80 years ago, has transformed into a giant 76,000 square foot American experience. The tiny town of Wall seems to exist just for this store, but unlike the twine ball, this attraction didn't disappoint. What appeared to be one big city block filled with stores, is really just one huge connected store. Wall Drug had just about every souvenir you could ever imagine, and then some.

Annie Get Your Gun

Besides a bunch of souvenir junk, there were also plenty of  funny photo ops in the place. A giant jackelope. A T-Rex. Several different wood carvings of famous Old West characters. It gave us a chance to explain to the girls about famous outlaws, and gunfighters of the Old West. Billy the Kid. Wild Bill Hickock. Annie Oakley. They wondered why all of them looked so angry.
 Later they came running across the store to inform us they had finally found "A pretty lady!"
"Come see it!" they pleaded.


I'm pretty sure she was a prostitute.

Or possibly just a tavern floozy.

Most likely a prostitute, though.

Pretty, indeed girls.

So far so good on the quality of the roadside stops. Next up, was the one and only Corn Palace, located in Mitchell, SD. Mitchell is a prairie town that is corn crazy and proud of it. It's high school sports teams are the Kernels, and its local radio station's call letters are KORN.  Touted as the "agricultural showplace of the world," the Corn Palace is just that. A palace made of corn. Each year, the towns people come together and re-decorate the exterior of the building with new pictures and artwork, all made completely from corn.



Originally constructed in the late 1800's, the building is now more than just a novelty in the center of the town. It is the focal point of the town itself. Inside the palace is a full-sized gymnasium where the locals gather to cheer on their favorite teams. We just so happened to stop by during a basketball tournament, and the place was packed. It just seemed natural to have corn artwork on the walls, and not goofy or cheesy at all.


The rest of the roadside stops now seemed even less interesting after these two. I mean, the Pioneer Auto Museum might be great and all (did the pioneers even drive cars?), but it was no palace made of corn that could host a basketball tournament. You see Wall Drug and The Corn Palace were more than just goofy roadside stops. Maybe originally they were. But over the years, they changed. They grew. They expanded. They adapted. They became super-awesome goofy roadside stops.

And we loved them for that.