Burma Shave ... Memories

No, sorry to say we didn't see any Burma Shave ads along I-90 as we crossed South Dakota. For those of you too young or untraveled to have ever seen or heard of them, the Burma Shave shaving cream company used to place sets of 5 or 6 small sequential signs with a line from a verse on each sign with the final punchline on the last one. I remember as a girl traveling by car across the country reading the Burma Shave signs out loud with my sisters.

Back to that in a bit. First, we splashed our way out of the Onawa campground having at least left behind most of the bug guts from the windshield. The morning television show had mentioned there had been a tornado or two in Sioux Falls which was right on our route into South Dakota! Although it was finally determined that three F2 tornadoes had struck Sioux Falls, none of them were near our route and we saw none of the damage.

We did soon see a lot of billboards about Wall Drug and these triggered memories of those long ago cross country rides when I was young and of a later stop I made at Wall Drug, perhaps 40 years ago. When I was a kid, we spent several summers crossing the country to my grandmother's in Arizona. This was back before interstates and Lady Bird's beautification of the countryside and all sorts of roadside attractions had miles of signs as you approached them. The Wall Drug signs had the right effect on me ... I wanted to stop there although it was miles and miles before we would get there.

We did see some huge sculptures over on the south side of the interstate around mile marker 375 which I later found on the internet. They were part of the Porter Sculpture Park and if I had seen what else was there, I might have prevailed upon Geoffrey to stop there! He's lucky I don't research online while he drives!

All this time, unlike earlier forays across the nation's middle, we had not seen any of the large windmills although we had seen a few of the huge blades headed both north and south. Here, near White Lake, South Dakota, we finally saw a few! Soon after that we arrived at a rest area billing itself as an overlook as well. It is near Chamberlain, just east of and overlooking the Missouri River and has a big statue of a Native American woman.

I thought the statue was probably Sacajawea as the stop also had a small building with Lewis & Clark expedition exhibits and we had seen signs that we were more or less following the Lewis & Clark trail, including a monument back near Sioux City, Iowa, to Sgt Charles Floyd who was the only member of the expedition to have died along the way. I later learned that the statue was NOT Sacajawea at all but rather a compilation of several Native American women into a statue called Dignity.

At the Missouri River we had transitioned from flats to rolling hills and saw fields of sunflowers being grown as a crop and others of corn stalks staying in the field after harvest to help prevent erosion. The sunflowers are grown not only for the sunflower seeds many people snack on but also for birdfeed and oils. In North Dakota they even created a pie from sunflowers! Some of the fields had clearly been flooded and here and there you could still see ponds of water in the field, some with ducks and even a crane or two.

Missouri River from the overlook

South Dakota is one of those long states you feel like you will never get across! We stopped for lunch in Mitchell at a Perkins and then went on to the KOA in Kennebec. The man at the KOA told us they had flooded back on Memorial Day and had none of their usual amenities, just the regular sites with their hookups. Since we weren't looking for a swimming pool or laundry we were okay with it as apparently were several more travelers that came in after us.

Kennebec KOA - Memorial Day

We were glad in the morning that we had kept going across South Dakota as the television said there had been flooding in Mitchell where we had lunch and parts of I-90 were closed between Sioux Falls and Mitchell. We had also called John and Leslie and luckily they were approaching Rapid City from the south on I-25 so weren't in any of the trouble areas.

Most of these roadside attractions are long gone, put out of business by interstates and Lady Bird but Wall Drug has grown into a tourist mall with a museum, restaurant, art gallery, and a multitude of gift shops. They even had a charging center for electric cars.

Both in homage to the old roadside attractions and to the stop I had made there decades ago, we of course had to stop. My had it grown! I had a lovely time cruising the tourist trap gift shops (and spending money) while Geoff made himself comfortable on a bench!

After lunch at Wall Drug during which I managed to accidentally squirt Geoffrey when I tried to use a packet of mayo we headed on to Rapid City. I think he's forgiven me for showering him with mayo and it was funny from my side of it! Wish I'd gotten a picture! He was so surprised looking!

From Wall Drug on westwards we had heavy wind and Geoff slowed down a good bit to manage driving poor clumsy Wolf along the interstate. We finally got checked in at the Rapid City KOA, set up with the rental car we had reserved, and talked to John and Leslie learning that they had gotten safely to their hotel. We then simply kicked back and rested for the rest of the day and night!