My wife was disappointed with Wall Drug. I wasn’t — chiefly because it was exactly as stupid as I expected it to be. And it can’t be said that we didn’t give it a chance. We walked through most of the stores, took advantage of several of the photo opportunities, and ate in the cafe. We even bought drugs.
I realized after we left that the one store we totally missed was the bookstore.
I’ll give them this — there wasn’t a lot of unused floor or wall space.
The Traveler’s Chapel — empty except for one guy who stood in the doorway and glared at me when I tried to get inside to look around.
Thinking that the Apothecary Shoppe Museum was the only place to buy drugs, we stopped in and bought a bottle of Tums.
One wonders … Do they sell a lot of mounted Jackalope heads at $99.98 each?
The Backyard Mall was almost empty. One end of the hallway was filled with a T-Rex head poking over a concrete wall. Moments after I took the first photo, the lights began flashing and the head lifted up a few feet and it began roaring at a painful volume.
One of the features I didn’t see advertised on any of the billboards along I-90 was the hallway filled with photos of the Hustead family. It’s even hard to find on the map — it’s listed as “Memorabilia” just above the T-Rex head. In the nearby Skinky Saloon, I discovered the “Wild Bill Wax Display.” Bill doesn’t seem too upset — he’s resting his gun hand on the table. But on the other hand, anybody who wears pants like that other guy deserves to be shot.
The animatronic Chuck Wagon Quartet in full voice. When we’d had our fill, we ordered supper and ate in the dining room.
I had a ham and cheese sandwich that wasn’t too bad — at least the ingredients were fresh. My wife had roast beef and mashed potatoes that she described as “all right, mediocre.” We split a piece of cherry pie that was much the same.
And of course we had a free glass of ice water.
We bought a few more things, including a package of plastic cowboys and Indians, in the original section of the store where all this started. It’s still a fairly normal drug store.
