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After a few hours of sleep in Rapid City, we began our journey at the drug store…Wall Drug Store. Wall Drug is more akin to a shopping mall for tourist than a drugstore, but it began as a drugstore back in 1931. There is a drugstore still in there…somewhere. If you’ve ever traveled out West, you’ve seen the billboards advertising Wall Drug. They would give Alexander Shunnarah a run for his money with their number of billboards. Wall Drug sells most anything you might need, including prescription drugs, and a whole lot of what you may not need, but hey, you’re on vacation. One of the cafes in the store sells a pretty good buffalo burger and not so good onion rings. I suspect what has made them such a draw is location, location, location.  Yes, it is located in the middle of nowhere, but one of the main entrances to the Badlands is across the street. Before you take off across the Badlands on a horse with no name, or in a car with no gas, you’ll need to stop at the drug store for necessities you really don’t really need. If you want a baseball cap with The Badlands written across its front, they have those too…and, so do I.

With a tank full of gas and my belly full of buffalo burgers, like the tourist we were, I pulled on my new cap and we hit the loop. The loop, also known as highway 240, is 39 miles of two-lane blacktop highway that runs between Wall and Cactus Flats, South Dakota. It is 39 miles of some of the most unusual but beautiful countryside you’ll ever seen. The town on the other end may be called Cactus Flats but not much in between there is flat. I pulled up to the entrance gate into the park, whipped out my America the Beautiful National Parks Senior Adult Pass and drove in like we owned the place. Well, actually we do, all of us American citizens do. 

Just inside the gate stood a herd of buffaloes waiting to greet us. When I saw the size of those big boys, I hoped they didn’t know what I had just eaten for lunch! The road through the park is filled with walking trails and pullouts overlooking majestic rugged rock pinnacles and buttes. The mountains look more like sand dunes than rocks. The God made colors of nature there are amazing! They look like stacked white sand but with stipes of red, brown, and bright yellow that appear to have been skillfully painted. They reminded me of that sand art in a bottle but without the bottle. They look like God has poured out a little of one color and then another as he alternated the colors and the thickness of the stripes. Some of the mountains are tall and narrow while some are shorter but broader, and they continue one after the other as far as the eye can see. All of that is below the most beautiful azure-blue sky that stretches out forever.

We finished the day in Mitchell, South Dakota, where we toured the world’s only Corn Palace. The Corn Palace is more than 100-years old. The Palace is redecorated every year with naturally colored corn. The cobbs are cut in half and strategically fastened to the exterior and interior walls to create beautiful murals. Our timing was just right to see some of the annual work being done. On our way out we enjoyed a bag of freshly popped popcorn…it was all one color! Then, we were on the road again!