Rapid City, SD to West Des Moines, IA

After Crazy Horse, we drove 30 miles to Rapid City and stayed in a Country Inn & Suites. The room was cheap, comfortable, and the boys had their own room and slept in (even Walt!). We hit the road about 9:30am an once we hit the I-90, we began seeing dozens of signs for "Wall Drug". After 50 or so miles of signs, we knew we had to stop.





As soon as we got inside, we could smell the fresh donuts and couldn't resist.





The store was about a block long--sold all kinds of junk.





But the animatronic singing cowboys really sealed the deal for me.





From Wall Drug, you can either get back on I-90 or take a detour through Badlands National Park--we went for the latter.























Badlands is appropriately named.

Several hundred miles later, we made it to Buffalo Ridge, SD, where Harry suggested we stop for a buffalo burger.





This place was right out of the Twilight Zone. They sold buffalo skin, heads, jerky, sausage, and burgers. I asked for a menu, and the old guy says, "the only thing we have is buffalo burgers." Fair enough.





They also had a fairly impressive selection of fireworks:





But like momma always said, "ain't nothin' better than some old freaky animatronic piano playin' gorilla!"





Yes folks, Sam the gorilla was the true gem of Buffalo Ridge. For $0.25, you get his best rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel", plus he will haunt the dreams of your children for months at no extra charge.





We still had several hundred miles to go at this point, and Walt was not feeling good and not happy about being strapped in the car seat. But we motored on, seeing lovely scenery between South Dakota, Nebraska, and finally Iowa. At 9:45pm, we arrived at the Roses.

















We stayed up till 2:00am talking, then Bob got paged to go to the hospital at 3:00am. What a day!