Deadwood, SD to Omaha, NE - Day 6

Laundry done, car reloaded, heading up the mountain to check out the Mt Moriah Cemetary and… traffic is stopped because there was a parade downtown. The parade was over and everything, but they were letting cars through in some secret masonic way that meant we didn’t move for… ever. So we pulled out and into a parking lot, and started walking.

At which point it occurred to me that this meant that we would be walking UP A MOUNTAIN! The takeaway from this is that next time I’m going on a road trip, I should train by going to Wreck Beach every day before we leave. A little stair training would have done wonders.

Once we got to the top (well, to be fair, the cemetery was probably in the middle of the mountain) we were lucky enough to arrive at the gravesites at the same time as a bus tour, so we got to listen in on some terrific historical information about the whole story.

The trip back down the mountain, by the way,
 was a great deal more fun!

We got back in the car (the post-parade traffic had thinned) and headed east and south to Mt Rushmore.

Which was really as awe inspiring as advertised.

We took pictures, read about the methods used to carve it (spoiler – mostly carefully placed charges of dynamite) and saw the last sculptor’s studio, where the 1/12 scale model stood next to a huge window looking at the mountain at the same angle, so Borglum could compare and radio instructions to the workers.

Incredible fact: during the entire period of construction, with pre-WW2 safety gear, carving a giant sculpture with hand held jackhammers and dynamite, there were ZERO fatalities, and the most serious injury's victim returned to work weeks later!

Well, after a beer and a hotdog back at the visitors’ center (US National Parks sell beer… awesome) we hit the road again, and before too long, we started seeing road signs (Burma Shave Style) for Wall Drug. Of course we had to go!

The place was so cute I can even
 forgive the misplaced apostrophe!

Wall Drug is… a bizarre, bizarre thing. An entire (albeit tiny) town (Wall, SD) has been entirely taken over by its drug store.



Really. It’s like a theme park now, except for the  bank, a library and, like, 5 houses.

Apparently the whole thing got started when the owner decided to put roadside signs out to advertise that they would give away free ice water to hot, tired motorists. Now there are apparently Wall Drug signs in Greenland. Incredible.

Animatronic Dinosaurs and 6 Foot Rabbits!

And wagons east again. We drove the rest of the way through South Dakota (we didn’t get to see the Corn Palace or the attached maze because the sun had gone down), cut through Iowa and wound up in Nebraska (Omaha to be precise) to stay the night at the cheapest hotel ever. That doesn’t ask you if you want the whole night.

Because of the combination of an extra activity at the beginning of the day and the loss of an hour to the miracle of time zones, we didn’t get in until around 2am, so that was the end of the adventures for the day.

Yes, I took the picture as we were leaving Nebraska. But it was too dark for a photo when we arrived!