Wall Drug

Wall Drug

If you travel anywhere near South Dakota, you will see signs for Wall Drug in Wall SD. Lots of signs. As you get within 100 miles the signs appear about every quarter mile. I don’t know how many billboards Wall Drug rents, but it must be thousands.

Eventually your curiosity will get the better of you and you just have to go see it. And we did. I was braced for disappointment, like I had experienced just a few days before at the Corn Palace in Mitchell SD. Or like the disappointment we felt last year at South of the Border, a sad relic from a pre-Interstate past.

Arrow in rig

But we weren’t disappointed in Wall Drug. It occupies a full city block (if a block in a town of 800 can be called a “city block”). It is mostly a souvenir shop but, yes, about 2% of its floor space is still a drug store. It also has amusements for the kids and a huge café (capacity 540) offering “free ice water” (which is how it became a tourist destination) and 5 cent coffee (“not bad” according to Jett). We ate lunch in the café and had excellent open-face roast beef at a very reasonable price. And some delicious donuts for dessert.

Wall Drug is surrounded by other tourist-oriented businesses which were also interesting. Jett bought an authentic handmade arrow at one which we have hung as a decoration in our rig.

Jackaloo photo op

Free water park

Flowers at Wall Drug