Monday, December 1, 2008

On The Way To Wall Drug

For anyone that doesn't know there's a tiny little town in SD named Wall, after a rock formation in the badlands just down the road. And in that town is a drugstore called Wall Drug, established 1931. That was when the automobile was just beginning to take over, and all the old Model-T's would come driving down what is now interstate 90 in the summer months, with no AC and the windows down in a very dry climate. Well, Wall Drug got the bright idea to start advertising free ice water for anyone who stopped by on billboards along the road, and a piece of Americana was born. All the way from Iowa and Nebraska there are still billboards advertising Wall Drug along the road. There are even signs in Alaska and very "far away lands" announcing exactly how many miles it is to Wall Drug.

Well, Wall Drug has been a bit of a family tradition for us, as we've travelled back and forth through SD on our way to and from MT. So on our trip today I took pictures of as many billboards as I could get - while zipping by at 79 miles an hour. Here are the ones that turned out OK, as well as a few of the countryside and other interesting "oddities" along the way (South Dakotans have a penchant for finding interesting ways to display their creatvity along interstates.) There are probably twice as many signs that I either missed or didn't get good shots of.

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