There’s a drug store in teensy little Wall, SD, that’s so big it takes 30 minutes to find a parking spot. Mostly because every parking spot you think is available is taken by a motorcycle pulled as far up into the space as possible, thereby eliminating any shadow that may clue you in from the lane.

“Wow, bikers really love this place,” I muttered to Earl as I was punk’d out of yet another space by yet another sneaky Harley.

Then I realized it was days away from the big annual rally in Sturgis just down the road. Ah.

Wall Drug is perhaps the most misleadingly named place we have encountered. Sure, it started as a drug store back in the ’30s, but now, the actual drug store inside is maybe the size of my kitchen. The rest of the place, which is enormous, is all boot shops and souvenir shops and arcades and restaurants that seat 400 people. It’s big enough to warrant its own visitor map.

And it’s full of little surprises. Like the traveller’s chapel.

The chapel is the least crowded place in the joint, has well-insulated walls to keep out the noise, and is a welcome respite sandwiched between storefronts. It’s a good place from a break and a prayer.

I could have stayed for an hour. Earl was done after 15 seconds. She’s very much the hustle-and-bustle type.

More entertaining than the main shops is the Backyard. Earl found Mount Rushmore…again. This time with less photobombish Roosevelt.

There are fantastically random jumping fountains back there, too. Sometimes they’re choreographed to music. One review we read somewhere compared them to the fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas. Um…no.

Do you know how much cajoling it took to convince my kid to go out there and run through the stinkin’ fountain? Usually, she’s all up for getting as wet as possible, but that day, her name might as well have been Elphaba and water melted her.

“But you can run through and get as wet as you want and I won’t fuss! I’ll even run through with you! See?” as I get splattered from a stream landing by my foot.

“Nah, I’m good.”

Sigh.

She was more into mining.

For 10 bucks, they give you helmets with lights, stick you in a dark little 15×8 room with plaster rocks on the wall, and you hunt for all the gems you can possibly find—not a tall order since all the gems (brightly colored and polished) are placed on outcroppings on the wall rock, mostly at convenient kid height and none above my short little head. But Earl loved it, and that’s all that matters.

Gems in hand, we headed across the back building to the T-Rex.

What? You weren’t expecting an enormous animatronic T-Rex head next to the memorabilia shop in a tiny little town in South Dakota? Then you just don’t know Wall.

You also don’t know the 30 people that will stand around waiting for the T-Rex to “eat.” Supposedly, he does it every 15 minutes, but I decided there are guys monitoring a closed circuit camera and placing bets on how long the sucker tourists will stand there.

The answer? A long dang time.

When he finally gets “hungry”, he raises up, opens his mouth, roars, farts fog (well, not really, but where else would fog suddenly come from when a T-Rex is on the prowl?), then…stops.

Whee.

Wall Drug is brilliant in its touristy-ness. There’s something for everybody, merchandise at every reasonable price point, surprises around every corner, and heaps of photo ops.

The gorilla is missing a pinky. That freaky rabbit is my number 1 suspect. In case you were wondering.

Wall is my hero, though, for two reasons:

a) You have to play foosball to get the bouncy ball from the toy vending machine. It’s quite possibly the longest play you will ever get out of a quarter.

b) This sign. And it is enforced. The chick at the counter is on top of that.

I’d expected to stop in at Wall, grab a bite to eat, and be out in an hour headed toward Badlands. Instead, it turned into a nearly 3 hour stop.

While Wall has lots of things to describe, Badlands National Park is beyond description. Honestly, blogging this trip is teaching me that finding the words is so stinking hard.

Badlands drove that lesson home. The pronghorns were there to laugh at me.

In the middle of the plains, the earth opens up to all these colors and undulating waves of smooth and jagged rock, and you just stand there, gaping, thinking, “Wow,” over and over.

Millions of years of the planet are showcased in the layers of the badlands, eroding away at the hands of wind and water and man.

Clouds rolled around and a storm gathered to the east. The wind kicked up, then kicked up again, then again, then stepped it up to insane.

But the views were worth battling the breeze.

We did a quick walk around the boardwalk of the fossil trail.

There was the mandatory stop at the Visitor Center to let Earl get her Junior Ranger badge.

She also met the mannequin she wants to become.

Then it was off to gawk just a little more before calling it a day.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to find the words to adequately describe the South Dakota badlands, honestly. They were just so remarkably surprising and layered and brilliantly beautiful and photogenic.

I must go back.

“It’s flat.”

“Yeah, but at least it’s not as flat as Kansas. That’s flat flat. And straight.”

So went our conversation on the landscape of Wyoming as we left Cody.

Then Wyoming went through an identity crisis, like it couldn’t decide what geology it preferred to adopt.

Rainbow layers to rolling treed hills to craggy buttes led to grasslands and lakes. Really, Wyoming?

Of course, I guess most of this was a sea bed eons ago, but I still had no idea that landscapes could change so drastically in such a short distance.

Earl got tired of me pulling off the highway every two minutes real quick.

But it was so pretty!

The drive through Wyoming led us into South Dakota, home to one of the sights we have both been anticipating.

Mount Rushmore! Ooh!

I had no idea what to expect from Rushmore. I figured it could go one of two extreme ways: It would be a 10 minute “Oh, look at the big faces, get back in the car” stop or a 2 hour “is there not an angle where Roosevelt doesn’t look just squished in there?” lookie-loo stop.

Yet again, I was wrong.

The museums are chock full of all the details of how the monument was carved. Dynamite, mostly. But there are also lots of sculptures of alternative versions of the presidents. The “Wait, what are you guys looking at?” Lincoln was my favorite.

Because of the scale of the project, there were lots of casts used by the master sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, and the 400 men who worked for 14 years to turn vision into reality.

Here you have Jefferson’s hand, Washington’s face, and…an ear.

Earl wanted to wander down to the Sculptor’s Studio to see Borglum’s workspace and master 1:12 ratio model. On the way, we found Borglum himself, sculpted by his son, Lincoln, who took over the project when Borglum died in 1941.

All Lincoln really did after his father’s death was to tweak a couple of lapels. Money dried up. Something about a World War or some such. Part of me wonders why no one has attempted to go back in and complete the job. Mighty, mighty impressive, that would be. Even though ol’ Teddy still looks like he’s doing an awkward photo bomb.

Somehow, despite all the signs of “strenuous hike” and “422 stairs,” I agreed to go with Earl around the Presidential Trail for a better view of the real deal on the mountain. And, of course, we did it backwards, so like 785 of those 422 stairs were UP. But the views were worth it.

This close, the details pop. They’ll need to trim trees soon, however, or else Teddy will go from perpetual photobomber to persona non grata from the ground.

There were plenty of good views of George, though. Enough that anytime I said, “Hey, Earl! Look!” she’d come back with, “Hello again, George,” before she even turned around.

We huffed and puffed our way back around to the amphitheater to wait for the nightly lighting of the faces. We had plenty of time for Earl to work on her Junior Ranger booklet.

In this one, it had a section asking kids to draw a self portrait of themselves enjoying something around the park.

“I want to draw a picture of my face when I first saw it.”

“Okay.”

“Take a picture so I can copy it.”

My dramatic child, she melts me.

The booklet completed, we snagged a spot of dinner from the cafe then visited the ice cream shop.

Did you know Thomas Jefferson is credited with the first known recipe for ice cream recorded by an American? And that you can buy TJ’s ice cream at Mount Rushmore (and Monticello has the recipe posted online)? You can! We did!

It was yummy! Even though there were chunks of vanilla bean that Earl kept ungracefully spitting out and the scoops were way, way far too generous.

At 9:00, the night program began with a brief ranger talk and a 20 minute video on the men on the mountain. “God Bless America” played and spotlights hit the faces.

Members of the military, past and present, were invited on the stage to lower the American flag. There must have been 70 men and women file down the stairs to the platform. A few people left the program at that point, heading, I’m sure, to get out of the parking lot before the crowd. Earl nor I were very pleased.

“How rude,” Earl channeled Stephanie Tanner beside me.

But it didn’t dampen the chills down our spines as the flag was lowered and each person on stage was asked their name and branch. It was a proud moment in a remarkable place on what continues to be a phenomenal trip.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that Cody, WY, is named after Buffalo Bill Cody, but it is, and it’s awesome.

The original plan was to stay in Cody one night, then move along, but as we were pulling into town Thursday night, Earl saw what she has been looking for this entire trip: RODEO EVERY NIGHT.

So we extended our stay a night and snagged a pair of tickets to the Friday night rodeo.

That gave us Friday day to kill. The girl behind the hotel counter (and everything else I read about Cody) suggested the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, so the choice was easy.

I had no idea this place was part of the Smithsonian. It’s also five museums in one: Buffalo Bill Museum, Whitney Western Art Museum, Cody Firearms Museum, Draper Natural History Museum, and Plains Indian Museum.

That’s a lot of museumming under one roof!

Cody Firearms Museum was first up as we went in. Earl has a strong aversion to anything firearm-related, so she worked on an art project in Whitney while I made a quick pass through.

Oh, the guns.

I’m almost positive that they have one of every Winchester ever made.

They have a slew from other manufacturers as well.

They even had one of Audie Murphy’s Colts.

One of the coolest things to me, though, was the cabin in the museum where they had some of Teddy Roosevelt’s guns, his old carved grandfather clock, and his saddle.

And there was a grizzly bear outside the cabin!

The Western Art museum was next. It ran the gamut from traditional Western art to more pop-folk art.

Going in order, the Plains Indians Museum was next, but Earl has a thing about dark places and mannequins and loud, unpredictable sounds. Two minutes in, some animal bellowed from an unseen corner, Earl rammed her fingers in her ears, and she announced her desire to leave right then.

There’s no need to scare her, no matter how much I’d have liked to have explored, so we headed out to the garden with its partly cloudy skies and amazing sculptures.

I even found Sacajawea!!

I’ve seen that statue on video while working on The Spirit of Sacajawea (buy it! support it! it’s excellent!), but never in person. I can’t describe the feeling I had walking into that garden and seeing her standing there, completely unexpected. It was a bit overwhelming, I’ll admit. I spent a lot of time with that lady during that project, have seen heaps of reminders of her throughout the northwest, but this was the first time I’d seen a statue.

I had a moment.

Then it was back inside to the Buffalo Bill Museum where the “man himself” greets you in a whisp of smoke.

It makes for an otherworldly effect when someone walks through it.

From there, we took a journey through time and Bill Cody’s life; the formation of a man from scout to hero to entertainment sensation. There were plenty of relics and mementos to go along, of course.

And of course, Earl made friends playing a well-protected version of a Buffalo Bill board game.

The most impressive museum in the place, though, was the Draper Natural History Museum. Earl and I went through it backwards, starting downstairs as we came out of McCracken Research Library under the Buffalo Bill Museum.

We were greeted by a roadblock mullet.

Bison on one side and a skeleton on the other. See? Mullet.

Ha ha ha.

The Draper talked about everything from archaeology and the fossils to the animals that live in each altitude of the area to how wildfires replenish as much as, if not more than, they destroy. It was three levels of all kinds of great information, fantastic taxidermy, and a most impressive taxidermy/carving/sculpture hybrid.

Declaring the Buffalo Bill Center of the West a resounding success, we went across the street for a quick round of putt-putt.

By the time she beat me, it was time for dinner and the day’s main event: The Rodeo!!

Earl got to ride a bull!

It was everything you expect from a rodeo. From the clowns to the bareback bronc riders.

To the barrel racers and the calf ropers.

Midway through, they called all the kids down into the arena and turned a calf loose for them to chase. I have video of the whole shebang, including when the clown told them all that, as part of their warm-up before the calves were loosed, they had to lay down in the dirt and roll.

My child, she laid down, but my child, she is smart enough not to roll. She also didn’t stuff two handfuls of dirt in her pockets, something the clown said was a free souvenir from the rodeo.

I love my kid.

I love her enough that I bought her a lasso rope in the gift shop.

Yes, I am a sucker. Someone wanna teach her how to lasso now? Because I’m clueless.

We got to meet all the clowns afterwards. Earl got their autograph, despite all the wind’s attempt to blow the poster away. It was gusty, which is part of why this photo is so creepy. The rest is, well….

Clowns and redeye. Eek.