The village Wall halfway between Badlands and Rapid City offers a very American attraction. It boasts about owning the worlds largest and oddest drugstore. This might have been the intention when founding it in the 1930s, but nowadays there is not much left of a drugstore, the whole area is more or less a souvenir shop. Strange is it though, because old figures, wood benches, pictures, photos, and stuffed animals are displayed between the small shops, what lends Wall Drug the expression of a kind of museum. The founders wanted to attract customers in those days with complimentary ice and coffee for five cents, and this tradition was kept until today.
Ellisworth Air Force Base lays a few miles further, command centre of long range bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles that are daily kept at the ready, partially equipped with nuclear weapons. At the side of the Air Force Base the South Dakota Air & Space Museum is situated, an exhibition of discarded military airplanes and missiles. The entrance to open air exhibition and museum is free of charge, a bus tour to a missile silo bearing to charge is only offered in summer. Besides many older models the still used B1-B bomber and the huge B52 with more than 56 m span are most impressive.
In the evening we are back to Terry and Heather in Piedmont where Indian chicken with rice, several chutneys and Naan bread is on the menu everything homemade, including the bread!