Wall Drug, NZ-style

Wall Drug, if you have never heard of it before, is in South Dakota. It is off near the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore (relatively speaking. In truth, it is in the middle of nowhere).

They have this campaign to put up 1,000,000 billboards over the entire span of I-90 through South Dakota. This is all in the hopes that if you are driving through on I-90, you will stop when you finally get there if for no other reason than because 1,000,000 billboards told you to. They have even entered the digital age and have a modern web site up.

The rub is, that when you get there, all that greets you is a bunch of tacky souvenirs you can buy.

Nothing else.

Granted, there are no billboards to speak of in New Zealand. That's a good thing. However, every travel pamphlet you pick up on your drive advertises this amazing place with these big round boulders. In pictures, you assume "Oooh, that will be cool."



The reality, though, is the rocks are much smaller than you are led to believe. On top of that, you assume in the pictures they only included what would fit in the view finder of the camera when they took the photo, leaving you to optimistically assume there might be hundreds or thousands of similar massive rocks.

Not so much.



Nope. Just that handful. Everyone stops to see them and I assume is as disappointed as I was. I had my digital camera and HD video with me and didn't bother to take the lens cap off either. I took these pics with the iPhone, and on the way out, I took two more:



One of the buildings that greet you when you drive up (cleverly shaped like the rocks you are about to see, but massive by comparison),



and a gaudy, jam packed souvenir store and another larger deli shop.

Welcome to Wall Drug.

New Zealand style!