Western Towns

While I was in the Badlands I stopped in Wall to take care of some
essentials. The side trip also gave me the opportunity to check out
what the Wall Drug hype was all about. You start seeing these crazy billboards (by the hundreds) in Minnesota and they intensify as you get closer to this bustling metropolis. It's a lot like South of the Border, another "must see". Obviously Wall Drug is terribly overated
and just another place to shop... for junk. In fact I was so turned off that I refused to accept the free ice water.

One thing I did like were the signs on the highway, especially the one
Kevin Millar clearly stole the saying "cowboy up" from. But the signs
aren't quite as clever as I'd like them to be such as the old Burma Shave signs our parents remember. I did read that people have hanged signs "to Wall Drug" all over the world, which is pretty cool.

My other point about these Western towns is that they don't feel all that authentically Western. Some places seem to overdo the Western theme and in doing so cheapen the appeal. Deadwood was a tourist destination done up with modern chain hotels and casinos, Sheridan was more upscale shopping and empty promises. And then I
can't tell you how many gunslinging shootout reenactments there are. What ever happened to the real thing?

I want an actual corral, at least two watering holes with the small wooden swinging doors, precisely one Sheriff in town, a train OR bank robbery taking place, and tons of fresh horse manure out on a DIRT road.