Wall Drug/Badlands

Driving on any major road in South Dakota, you will find at least 50 signs for Wall Drug. It happens to be fairly close to where we live and we had never been to see what all the hype was about. Let me give you a little background on how it came about- I thought it was rather interesting.
Back in 1931 a young couple who had a small son bought the little drug store in a town of 300. It was right around the Great Depression and so everyone that lived in Wall were poor. The couples family thought they were nuts but all of them prayed about it and they all felt like this is where they were supposed to go (they were Catholic). They moved in December and hardly had anyone come into the store for quite a while and were wondering if God had given them the wrong answer. They decided to give it 5 years. By around 4 1/2 years they still hadn't seen any improvement. It was in the summer and they kept seeing lots and lots of cars driving by on the Interstate and the wife came up with the brilliant idea to put up signs along the Interstate telling the passerbys that there was free ice water. They said after those signs went up they never had a need of costumers again. Today on a "good" summer day 20,000 people stop in at Wall Drug. It is a crazy little set up they have there and we couldn't believe how many people were there while we were there. Obviously it has grown into more than a drug store and the town is now population of 818. In the summer months they have 200 employees running the place coming from colleges around the United States. We have a young lady from Utah who has been coming to our ward for the summer who is working there. It is quite fascinating to see it. And they have some Yummy vanilla soft serve ice cream- it doesn't look like soft serve ice cream but more of a whipped ice cream. Mmmmmmmmm my mouth is watering for it as I type this :).

So we took the trip out there to visit this place and actually quite enjoyed ourselves.

I had to tell Josh to calm down a bit cause he was getting a little crazy on this thing

This T Rex could be the newest attraction at Wall. Every 12 min he comes to life and starts roarin' like crazy. I think the anticipation of what it was was pretty intense for the kids and when it came to life Cambry was hiding behind Josh and Court was buried in his shoulders. Callie would peek out a couple times but mostly she couldn't look and Isaac said it was freaky. By the time we were leaving though Cambry and Isaac both wanted to see it again. I should've taken a picture of all the people waiting for it to come to life. It was pretty funny and a few times some mean adults would scare the little kids while they were waiting- one boy even started crying.

Callie was really worried about this T Rex wondering if it was really going to come to life- you wouldn't be able to tell in this picture though :)

I don't know if you have ever met a jack-a-lope but they are hard to find. We had to document this huge event.

After Wall we continued our drive about 20 min or so and went to the Badlands. Holy Cow it was so pretty. Heavenly Father has created such a beautiful world and we were able to see just a tiny bit of his awesome creations. It was Neat-O.

Finding the only shade available

The kids doing their superhero poses

If it wouldn't have been in the 90s and there wasn't "Beware of Rattlesnakes" signs all over- this would have been my favorite part. It was so beautiful. Isaac loved climbing on the rocks as did all the kids- he is my hiker as well and said he could do this all day.

Well that ends our fun touristy activities for the next 3 weeks or so. The Sturgis Rally starts in a week and the bikers are already rollin' into town. Time to hideout ;).