A couple of months back we started telling the kids about Wall Drug. We told them all about the abundance of toys, sweets, and weird things that you wouldn’t see anywhere else. They were sold.
We drove the backroads until we got close to Wall, then we bombed the interstate. Nice thing about South Dakota is that even on the backroads you can haul along at 80 without slowing down if you so choose. Straight roads and not a car to be found.
Another nice spot for a time-out.
Anybody my age remembers candy cigarettes. While our parents smoked, we sat in the backseat inhaling secondhand smoke and playing grown-up with our candy smokes. Ali and I thought these things disappeared sometime in the 80s, but here in South Dakota the tradition lives on.
But beyond how wrong it is to make and sell candy cigarettes, is how cheap they make them. This pack of smokes was twenty-nine cents. The cheapest candy in the entire store.
Worse still, they don’t paint one end of the cigarette red anymore, so now it looks like you’re smoking a joint.
Oh, come on, that’s a joke!
“How much farther to Wall Drug? How much longer until we get to Wall Drug? Now how much farther is it?”
Ali read the story of Wall Drug to us as we got close. The kids (or at least Ouest) liked it. So do I. In 1931 a young pharmacist and his new bride settle down in Wall. Business sucks for five years until one day the wife comes up with the idea of putting some signs up on the busy road offering free ice water. By the next year they’ve had to hire eight more workers, and it never slows down.
They built an empire in this tiny nothing of a town. Frankly, you’d have to be some sort of psychopathic serial killer to drive down I-90 and not stop at Wall Drug.
What’s the first thing we see when we walk through the doors?
17 Comments on “Wall Drug”
The picture of Ouest with the big dandelion in front of her face is excellent. Looks like a surrealist painting. Love the Bud Light/joint photo.
The thing I remember about Wall Drug amidst all the cheesy items, was that there were no……drugs!! 🙂
Great seeing the 356 back on the road. Looking forward to a playdate on your way through Ontario 😉
So, how would a person go about getting adopted by you guys? 🙂
Me too please!!
AHhh, the famous Giant Jackalope 🙂
Loved this post. Those random places are always the most fun with the kids.
A Schlitz would have made the candy reefer pic. I bet you have the kids fetching you those beers from a cooler in the back seat. 😉
And I bet that when the kids fetch the beers from the back seat, they probably aren’t wearing lifejackets or helmets!
We visited Wall Drug in 2013; the wife and I and our 9 year old grandson. We were driving from the nations capitol to Spokane WA. Its one of the four things I can recall about South Dakota; the other three being the Corn Palace, Mt. Rushmore, and endless cornfields.
The picture of you driving is so irresponsible. Keep those hands at 10 and 2!
From the blog: “Worse still, they don’t paint one end of the cigarette red anymore, so now it looks like you’re smoking a joint.”
Heh . . . maybe that highway worker down south a couple of years ago who said he figured you for someone who smoked (weed) had a strange premonition of that Bud Light/reefer picture. 🙂
TJ
Ok joint and beer, but Bud Light,do you really drink that stuff?
God no. Do I look like I’m in high school?
=)
Watching Lowes reaction to the animated dino I suddenly remembered your kids do not watch TV. Most kids his age wouldn’t have been fazed after watching what is being shown these days.
Ha .. I literally laughed out loud seeing the picture of you driving with the beer and “the joint”! I remember those candy cigarettes well … haven’t seen them in years. Didn’t see a pic of the kids “smoking”. =)
Still following your blog after all these years .. it never gets old. Hope to finally become liveaboards/cruisers (also after all these years) next Spring!
Reminds me of south of the border on the border of north & South Carolina. Another of the east coast’s “treasures”