Thursday:
Badlands National Park/South Dakota
Wall Drug/South Dakota
The Badlands was terrain like neither of us had seen before.  Evidently it's basically a combination of volcanic ash and an ancient sea floor.  I'm not sure how it all worked together, but the end result for us was a unique and interesting landscape.  There were lots of scenic pull overs and we took advantage of most of them to check out this amazing panorama.

A fun 'pit stop' on this trip was Wall Drug...which is South Dakota's answer to Carolina's "South of the Border".  There were signs about every mile all along the highway leading up to it.  I figured it would be a glorified old fashioned drug store, but we found it to be so much more than that...it was a mecca of tourist shopping and just general fun entertainment.  Their restaurant was packed with some really interesting and good quality western themed art.  The odd thing is, the art was not well lit and they weren't hung straight and some way too close together!  Also a no-no for original paintings was they were indirectly exposed to kitchen grease and moisture.  Anyway, it was almost more art than a person could enjoy in one go.  We stopped on the way out to the Badlands and again on the way back....we may only come to this area once in our lifetime, and we didn't want to miss anything.
Photos on right under Montana/Wyoming/South Dakota