# – Over 50 Aussie female solo traveller USA road trip and beyond

Darwin Day 3

Oh the weather here is fabulous. Funnily the locals told me it was cold at 25 this morning. Darwin city is so pretty with an area called the Waterfront. Lovely cafes and restaurants and an area to swim which is protected from crocodiles and Box Jellyfish.

The Parliament House looks like it is from a tropical island.

WWII Darwin was bombed by the Japanese for 6 months. Hard to imagine this harbour under attack

Oil storage Tunnels were built but the war ended prior to them being used

Puppet “The Digger” was made from WWII parts.

Some of Darwin

North Dakota

20 June 2018

I was told there was nothing to see in North Dakota. The first stop was the Painted Canyon. After driving through fields of corn and flat prairie grasslands this is quite spectacular.

Then Theodore Roosevelt National Park has bison, prairie dogs, wild horses, gophers and foxes.

This is the cabin known as the Maltese Cross where Roosevelt spent a lot of his peaceful time set in the town of Medora in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Stopped the night in Glendive whose motto is Good people surrounded by Badlands.

A pretty mean sunset in the West.

Glendive Dinosaur Museum. This is for my Great Nephew Christian.

“Wall Drug” Wall/Rapid City, South Dakota

17 June 2018

On my way to Rapid City South Dakota I stopped at Wall Drug in the town of Wall on the edge of the Badlands of South Dakota. So many people told me that I must stop there but I didn’t expect it to be such a commercial tourist attraction, although the many signs throughout the beautiful countryside should have alerted me. Many people do enjoy this tourist spot as evidenced by the big crowd of people there, in the middle of nowhere and pouring with rain. I saw it as “just” another shopping centre, however, the history behind the original store beginnings and how it has become a mega tourist attraction is interesting.

It was set up as a pharmacy in 1931 by Ted and Dorothy Hustead and business was not going well in Wall, known as the town “in the middle of nowhere”. Dorothy decided to put up signs on the highway to attract customers to their store by offering “free ice water” or “cold root beer”. This was so successful that they continued to expand the pharmacy to include food, clothing and this town in the middle of nowhere caters to 2 million tourists each year.

They even have a Harley Davidson store.

It is a popular spot to stop on the way to Rapid City and Mount Rushmore. There are apparently signs all over the world depicting the distance to Wall Drug including signs put up by American GIs around the world during WWII. Wall Drug Signs

Later when I arrived in Rapid City I did a walk around town and they have statues of a USA president on each corner.

I just photographed some of my favourites, not necessarily politically. There isn’t one of Obama yet and that should be unvieled around September.

A couple of Rapid City buildings in the historical centre.

I then went to a pawn shop looking for some Indian tribal paintings and the gun section shouldn’t have surprised me but it is disturbing.

I then went to Mount Rushmore, although I wasn’t expecting to be able to see anything as a thick fog hanging around all day got worse. Hopefully it will clear tomorrow.