What an incredibe day!! And a hot one!! It was about 20C (70F) at 6 am and got up to 34C (93F) in Rapid City!! Feels like Summer!!
On Wednesday, we had been seeing billboards for miles and miles about “Wall Drug”… after a bit of googling, we discovered that Wall Drug started as a drug store in Wall, South Dakota in 1931; and it grew into quite an amazing establishment! We just had to pop by! Several hours later, we had looked all over Wall Drug, ate at the restaurant, and explored the Main Street in Wall! Definitely worth the stop!!!!!
From Wall we went straight south into Badlands National Park. It reminded us of our Badlands out in the Drumheller area. Here are a few photos from some of our stops in the Park:
It turns out that all of the soft green in the photos is Sweet Clover – green leaves/stocks and yellow flowers…. there was ALOT of Sweet Clover!!
Here’s what I thing is South Dakota’s Wild Yarrow:
Brian’s shirt almost matched the clover! 🙂
On our way out of Badlands National Park, we found several of these little (okay, not so little) guys… big ‘ol fat Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs, in a “Prairie Dog Corral”! 🙂
And this is why they were corralled!!!!!! Bahahahahaha!!!! Maybe we have a new attraction for home!!!!! 🙂
We ended up in downtown Rapid City for Supper, at a wonderful Italian restaurant. And, it just so happened that Thursday evenings are “Rapid City Summer Nights” — some local live music, food vendors, local wine and beer…. all right close to the restaurant!
After Supper we went up to Mount Rushmore for their Evening Lighting Ceremony. Here’s a photo before the sun went down; the Memorial faces east, so no sunlight was on it while we were there.
A storm rolled by, just a bit north of the Memorial…
Mount Rushmore, illuminated, with another storm building behind it…
Neither of these storms “hit” us, but…. in the wee hours of the night we had one helluva thunder storm over Rapid City… sheet lightening and bolt lightening! Thankfully it was fast moving and we only had one booming round of thunder overhead with the rest of the thunder further off.