Wall Drugs, Deadwood and Prarie Dogs

Miles and miles before getting to Wall, South Dakota, there are billboards talking about Wall Drugs. This drug store has been in existence since 1931. Thousands of tourists stop in this little town to see this drug store. It has everything that a drug store should have and then some.....Lots and lots of "then somes". Plenty of tourist souvenir items, of course, as well as some of the best donuts any of us have ever eaten and....5 cent coffee. That's right, a 5 cent cup of coffee. Mom and I were wandering through the drug store, going from room to room, just browsing and realized that Dad was missing. We retraced our steps and found him, coffee cup in hand. (Dad said he had one dime and 3 pennies in his pocket.....so he placed 3 pennies in the slot and enjoyed a 3 cent cup of coffee). Don't worry, we placed an extra nickel in the slot later when we refilled our cups. From the 1st picture of Dad with coffee cup in hand, it looks like he really, really needed that coffee!

And, then there were the prarie dogs....we saw a convenience store that featured "prarie dog food", which just happens to be the same thing as "squirrel food" at our house.....unsalted peanuts in the shell. Our neighborhood squirrels love unsalted peanuts and so do their furry cousins, the prarie dogs. When we pulled up, a family was leaving to continue on their journey and gave us the rest of their peanuts so that we could feed the cute little critters. We had to keep an eye on Mom since we didn't want any twisted ankles due to falling in a prarie dog burrow, but all turned out OK. It turns out that the prarie dogs near that store were very well-fed little fellows. They probably were more interested in tourist peanuts in the early morning, but in the mid-to-late afternoon (when we were there) they were pretty full (no wonder those tourists had leftover peanuts to share with us.) But, we certainly did enjoy seeing the little guys up close and personal. Mr. Cubby, of course, only got to see them from a distance since he would have been unable to keep himself from running after them if he got too close.

When we were in the Mt Rushmore/Badlands area, we went to the Old West town of Deadwood. Wild Bill Hickock was shot to death during a card game in the town and is buried at the local cemetery. They do a daily re-enactment of a shootout in the middle of the street (stopping traffic in Deadwood for the event). The town has lots of places to eat and drink and many of the little places have small casinos in them....some with maybe 20 or so machines. We played for awhile in a few of the "gaming establishments", and it was fun to feed tokens into the machines and bring a cupful of tokens to the old-fashioned teller cages to exchange the tokens of that establishment for US dollars and cents before moseying down the street to try our luck elsewhere. Let's just say that we had worse luck than some, but better luck than Wild Bill had in Deadwood.

The Badlands and Mt Rushmore

We headed out from Elgin toward Mt Rushmore by way of the Badlands in South Dakota. Dad and I had been to Mt Rushmore a couple of times, but Mom W had never seen the 4 Presidents...so off we went. It was a warmer day when we got to Mt Rushmore and even though it was a mid-week day, there was a line of cars waiting to get into the park. I think we spent at least as much time waiting in lines to get a parking spot as we did looking at the monument. We only spent about an hour at the site (which included a 15 minute line and wait for the women's restrooms...why is it always that way, ladies??) We didn't go into the Visitor Center since Dad and I had already done that on previous visits and Mom had seen a couple of TV specials about the construction and had wanted to just take a look at the Presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt). It took 14 years to complete the monument and it is impressive to see.

While Mt Rushmore was impressive, it was predictable, and less interesting to us than the Badlands National Park, which we really enjoyed. We could just picture cowboys, Indians and "bad guys" planning ambushes and hiding in those hills. It was great. The drive through the Badlands allowed us to see lots of unexpected beauty. There were so many canyons and gorgeous natural rock formations to look at. And, we were lucky enough to spot lots of wonderful wildlife including a deer with her baby fawn and a heard of mountain sheep (some climbing on the rocks and others in a field which was close to the road). The Badlands are a treat!!

The World's Only Corn Palace

South Dakota is a beautiful state and it is the land of cattle, black hills gold and the World's Only Corn Palace.

The World's Only Corn Palace...another sign along the freeway....another opportunity to see something unique. The original corn palace was built in 1892 and it has been going steadily since then. Each year the exterior of the building is re-done. The building has a facade made of corn cobs and there are mosaic-like pictures decorating the outside of the building and inside the building where there is a sports arena and all kinds of corn products. Popcorn, corn on the cob, corn dogs...you name it.

Cornelius is the Corn Palace mascot....another photo opportunity! This was a fun stop and if you are ever in the area and have the time....go for it!!

Another thing we found interesting was to see that candy cigarettes are still sold in South Dakota, and there are so many different packages....just like the real thing. I remember loving the candy cigarettes when I was little, but haven't thought about them or seen them for sale in years.

Spam, Spam and More Spam

Spam...not the garbage e-mails that we all get....but the canned meat product that has made by Hormel since 1937....

I'll bet that most of us never knew that there was such a thing as the Spam Museum, built to document the history of Spam!! Well, when driving down the road in Minnesota, we couldn't resist taking the turnoff to see what it was.

We had a great time. Mom said "I guess we never know what we will be doing!". The "wall of Spam" inside the museum is made from more than 3300 cans. We had our picture taken with Spammy and watched the movie "Spam - A Love Story" in the museum theatre. The museum even had a letter from General Eisenhower, expressing his thanks for the product that was enjoyed by our servicemen.

One of the displays showed George Burns and Gracie Allen who promoted the product of their sponsor on their radio show. And, we saw a video of the Spamettes who sang about the wonders of Spam (among other songs). All of certainly wished that we could have worn those costumes...which included pointed hats...kind of like a princess hats, but not nearly as nice!

The Spam gift store had every possible Spam product, including 8 varieties of Spam....who knew there were so many?? I've never seen some of these in a grocery store (like Spam with Bacon)..perhaps we could special order it??

Baby, Pets, Antiquing and Uncle Ole's Purple Heart

The newest Elgin family member is Aidan...my cousin, Lisa's grandson. Some of the Elgin pets are featured here....Scrappy with Paul, Mom W with Snickers (longest eyelashes ever!!), and Pumpkin, the cat.

One of the pictures we had to take in Elgin was little Cubby in a Cubs hat that Aunt Marlene's cement goose was wearing. (Cement geese are decorator items that are fully-sized geese statues and there are all kinds of outfits that can be purchased for them, like seasonal outfits, or specialty outfits....such as a little Chicago Cubs suit.) Aunt Marlene's goose was wearing a complete Cubs outfit, but we thought it was pushing things just to get the hat on Cubby....so we waited until he was very, very tired. (Cubby, if you haven't already guessed, was named after the Chicago Cubs. Dad and many of my Elgin family are big Cub fans, even though the Cubs haven't had the best of luck in the last 100+ years where the World Series is concerned.)

When we were in Elgin we had some great times out and about with Aunt Audrey and Angela (my cousin). We had lunch and browsed for antiques in a couple of different towns in Illinois as well as a town in Wisconsin. One of our lunches was in Rockford, Il and the restaurant had some interesting antique decorations, including the Speakeasy Bar that came from a Chicago hotel that was owned by Bugsy Moran. And, of course, Mom was drawn to some of the hats that were in one of the stores...she especially liked the gold hat that had a matching purse. A very flashy gold color for sure, too bad we couldn't find little white gloves to wear along with them.

Dad wanted some pictures that told of Uncle Ole's military career. He was awarded the purple heart after being wounded in action in Korea. Angela put together a collage of various military souvenirs (including the purple heart). My cousin Brian's wife, Robin, put together a memory book as a surprise for Uncle Ole a few years ago. Uncle Ole's Mom had saved so many things from when her son was in the service, including letters that her son sent her from overseas, the telegram that told of his being wounded in action and the letter advising of his purple heart recommendation. Robin did a great job on the book and it was fun to look at. What a great surprise for my uncle and how wonderful that his Mom saved all of those things for him. I had never seen a purple heart before...interesting!