We crossed into Mountain Time today, meaning we’re one hour behind Door County and one hour ahead of the Pacific NW.  Since it was like having an extra hour in the day, we felt a little freer to make a couple stops along the way.

When we first crossed into Mountain Time, the land was flat and I said, “Where are the mountains?”  But we soon began to see variations and we spent most of today climbing.

At a view point in South Dakota

We came to Wall, SD where the world famous Wall Drug Store is.  This was one of the places where we stopped and went in.

Ted, Billy, and Rick Hustead’s Wall Drug Store takes up a whole block.

In December 1931, Ted and Dorothy Hustead and their four year old son, Billy, bought Wall Drug Store on the edge of the Badlands.  Ted had a degree in pharmacy and his father had left him $3000.  He and Dorothy wanted to be in a small town with a Catholic church they could go to every day.  Wall had everything they wanted except customers.  The locals were poor.  They occasionally bought medicine, but no one from outside Wall ever came.  They thought that when Mount Rushmore was finished being carved, droves of people would come in off the highway, but they didn’t.

A necklace tree inside the souvenir store

Pappy, who will give you a little of his wisdom for a fair price.

Ted told Dorothy they’d give it their best effort for five years, and if it didn’t pan out they’d do something else.  Dorothy was optimistic, but it had been four and a half years and still nothing was happening.  One hot summer day, Dorothy went to take a nap while Ted minded the store, but she couldn’t sleep for all the traffic going by on the highway.  After an hour she came back into the shop and told Ted she’d had an idea.  In the heat, surely all those drivers were thirsty.  What if they advertised that they would give away free ice water?  Ted thought it was kind of a silly idea, but he made up some signs and posted them out on the highway.  Before he even got back to the store, people started coming in to get their free ice water.  Some of them also bought ice cream cones.  Since then, Wall Drugs has grown into a tourist stop.

Traveler’s Chapel

One of several dining rooms; we had lunch in this one.

Billy took over, and now his son, Rick, is running the store with his mother, his wife, and his daughter.

We spent more time in there than we probably should have.  When we came back out to the RV, we smelled an odor inside.  It smelled like our black water tank.  It wasn’t too bad so we figured we’d dump it when we reached our campground.

We got to Rapid City, SD where there is a Walmart.  We needed some groceries and I have been needing a haircut, so we spent some time in the store.  This time when we went back out to the RV, the smell was overpowering.  Mark began to wonder if our black tank had a leak.  We could barely stand the smell, so we opened several windows and traveled down the highway that way.  I was getting a slight headache from the odor.

Sturgis, SD is a mecca for motorcyclists.

Welcome to Wyoming: Forever West

Near Sundance, WY

Hillocks

I asked Mark what this sort of fence like thing was, and he said it’s a drift control to help keep snow drifts from piling up on the highway.

Sunset

It looked like one of the oil wells was burning off excess gases.

Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.
“I wish this smell would go away!”

As soon as we got to our campsite and got set up, Mark hooked up the hose to the sewer at our site to try to drain the black water tank, but very little would come out.  Mark figured it was somehow plugged, so he asked me to get our biggest kettle and boil some water.  I filled the kettle with water and then lit the front burner on our stove.  As soon as it lit, one of the back burners flashed.  I looked down at the knobs and saw that the knob for the back burner was on slightly.  When I told Mark about it, we realized that had been the source of the odor we had been smelling.

No wonder I was getting a headache.  It’s a wonder we weren’t all asphyxiated.  Mark said the stove could have exploded when I lit it and it was a good thing we had the windows open.  God has been blessing us for weeks, and now it appears He’s been protecting us as well.  Praise the Lord!  Thank You, Jesus!  God is good!