Road Trip: South Dakota--From the Badlands to the Border

It has been a little bit since I have done a road trip post. This post will focus on our couple days we spent driving from the Badlands in South Dakota to the border of South Dakota and Minnesota. We saw some amazing things!

1. Badlands National Park--We didn't do much other than enjoy the amazing scenery. We drove the Badlands Loop Highway (Highway 240) through the park and were amazed at what we saw. For miles on one side all we saw was prairie. On the other side the prairie drops off hundreds of feet to the prairie below. In between the two levels are these amazing dirt/rock formations that were 100's of feet high peaks. They looked like if you walked on them they would crumble. There were fascinating stripes of colors through the "mountains". The stripes of different types of rock were amazing. I know I am saying amazing a lot but I just can't think of any other way to describe this. You will just have to look at the pictures which really don't do it justice. The drive through the Badlands was really neat because some of the time you are at the top of the "mountains" and you looked down on everything. Other times you were at the bottom and you could really see how tall they were.

2. Wall Drug--In Wall, SD just a little way from the Badlands off I-90(I think). We saw cryptic signs for this place miles, and miles, and miles before we were even close to Wall Drug. They really peaked our interest with, "Coffee 5 cents Wall Drug" or "Free Ice Water Wall Drug." This is one crazy place. It is HUGE! You go inside and it is like a frontier town main street. Each store has a store front like you would see on a street. There are different types of stores-bookstore, western wear, shoes, apothecary, and so much more. If you take a side hall way you go into this drug store like place with a huge crazy assortment of different stuff-trinkets, souvenirs, health and beauty items, candy, and lots of other stuff. Then you walk into the ice cream parlor and their dining room. The dining room was huge! We had to have the full experience so we ate there. It was a bit expensive and the food was decent. If you can find you way out to the back there is a strange assortment of stuff. This is a fun area for kids. There is a covered wagon, giant jackalope, giant dinosaur and other things. I think this was called the backyard. Then you can walk into the back building and do some mining, play some video games, shop at the toy store or try not to be eaten by a large, smoke-breathing t-rex. I know this all sounds weird and it was. We spent a few hours here just looking around. It was quite an experience. RoadsideAmerica.com has a good page telling about Wall Drug.

3. Corn Palace--As I told my husband as we were driving through South Dakota, South Dakota creates its own tourism. The Corn Palace is no exception. This is a large building in downtown Mitchell. It is attached to the city hall. The cool thing about this building is that the outside is covered completely in organic products-corn, grain and grasses. They had created pictures out of corn and stuff. It is a very interesting sight. We didn't go in but I think they have some info and a movie inside about SD agriculture. Again, RoadsideAmerica.com has some info about this attraction too.

This ends this road trip post. I hope you enjoyed these interesting activities. My next road trip post will focus on Minneapolis, MN, our last stop on our few thousand mile trip.

Thank you for stopping by. Have a great day!

Until next time...