Highlights From An Impromptu Father/Daughter Road Trip
My phone was ringing on a Tuesday five years ago. This was not unusual. Nor was it odd for the call to be from my father. Dad sometimes will call eight or nine times in a single day. Unless he is in camp. We get a blissful radio silence when he is off logging, mining, or excavating.
My dad has had a very colorful history. Especially in the employment department. The joke in my family is that he takes after Uncle Otis, a man who was known to say:
"If they call you by your first name; it's time to find another job."
One month Dad might be building a tarmac for Homeland Security outside of Nome, Alaska, but the next time I would talk to him he might be staying in an old Victorian house in Leadville, Colorado doing mine reclamation work. You never can guess where he's going to call from. I grew up in this environment, so his movements never surprise me.
So, with that bit of personal trivia spread before you on the explanatory table, it would probably come as very little surprise that there was indeed some adventure to be had when I answered Dad's call.
"Uncle Allen's sick, I'm leaving right now. You want to ride to his house with me?"
At the time, which was late on a Tuesday afternoon, Dad was in Western Washington, I was in Northern Idaho, and sick Uncle Allen was in Tennessee.
"Sure Dad, I'll ride along with you." I'm always up for road trips, and I really wanted to see my Uncle Allen. He had a wolf when I was a kid, and I had a soft spot when it came to my uncle. He had spent a lot of his career on the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, was a forward observer during the Vietnam War, and always had a glass of scotch in one hand and cigarette in the other. There was something charismatic about all of his rough edges.
The next morning, early because my dad has no concept of respectable hours, I found myself in Dad's 3/4 ton Chevrolet pickup. Not the most fuel efficient vehicle for a twenty-two hundred plus mile(one way!) road trip, but we never do anything in a reasonable manner. We drove 7000 miles in 12 days, and five of those days were spent at Uncle Allen's house in Oliver Springs, Tennessee. We managed to drive through twenty-two states during that time, and we saw all manner of interesting things. Today's anecdote contains an exposition of one of the more noteworthy sites that we beheld: Wall Drug.
Dad and I were heading east on I90 out of Rapid City, South Dakota. Our discussion was colored with all manner of Mt. Rushmore-esque descriptors as we had done a drive by of that historic site and all of the touristy attractions that the carved mountain and it's vicinity held for travelers. We gradually became aware of signs on the side of the road. They all said "Wall Drug" on them.
"What in the Wide World of Sports is Wall Drug?" Dad spouted.
"I have no idea, but seriously, just how many signs are there?" I squealed with laughter in reply, for there was another sign, this one with a doughnut on it.
By the time dad and I had drove by 40 plus miles of free ice water, 5 cent coffee, and a plethora of other Wall Drug signs we had made up our minds that we were going in to the Wall, no matter what it was.
"Put er' into the WALL!" was our battle cry as we took the exit for the Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota.
It wasn't just a store, it was an experience! Wall Drug may have started out as a drug store that offered free ice water to lure travelers to visit during the Great Depression, but it was anything but a simple drug store now. The place took up a city block. Within that warren of a building there is a restaurant, art galore, various stores, stuffed animals, a chapel, little boutique shops, and yes a drug store.
Dad and I wandered around in that place for quite a while, got some of that fabled coffee and doughnuts, and continued on our way in a mutually jubilant frame of mind. Anytime someone irritated us on the freeway we'd utter our newly minted battle cry in the general direction of said irritant:
"Put er' into the WALL!"
They even have DINOSAURS at the Wall!
All the pictures in this post were taken years ago by the author on her old, broken digital camera.