Casinos, beer and weiner dogs

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Today was another long day on the bus. I think that's going to be a recurring reality. When you're seeing as many places as we are, it's a lot of travel time. We left the hotel at 8 am and head out of Rapid City for Deadwood, South Dakota.

Kevin Costner apparently became enamored of the region around Deadwood whle filiming Dances with Wolves and while he was able to build a casino in the town, apparently the powers that be put the kibosh on his desire to build a resort on a hilltop outside the town. But he was able to go ahead with a cultural center telling "the story of the Buffalo". I've always been a believer that there are three sides to every story, yours, mine and the truth. So after a couple of days of hearing the settlers version of the story (although I must say that Jack, our tour guide has been pretty even handed ), it was nice to hear the Native side of things. Tatanka has a nice exhibit hall and outside there are a couple of tepees you can examine. But the coolest things about the place aqre the view (supposedly you can see parts for 4 states from it) and a HUGE buffalo hunt bronze sculpture installation. It depicts Indians on horseback stampeding bison towards a drop off as part of the hunt. It's slightly larger than life size and really impressive as was the talk given by the local speaker.

After Tatanka, we took a bus tour of Deadwood. Unfortunately, we didn't go up to Boot Hill, where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were buried, but the bus driver for the tour was really funny. We had about 1.5 hours in Deadwood, and honestly, I saw most everything in 1/2 hour. The main street was lined by casinos (including the one Costner owns), and tourist trap type stores. But I found something fun, the Black Hills Model Railroad club. They have a really nice model train set up in the basement of one of stores. According to the gentleman I was speaking to, they were closed for a year and are only now fixing everything up again for public viewing. It was a really nice set up and they obviously love what they do.

And there were a couple of other fun things to the town today. It was weiner dog race day, and beer festival. Because of this, the main street was closed off to vehicular traffic, and there were a whole bunch of cute dogs leading their owners along.

Next we went to the town of Lead (prounced Leed, not Led), which was where the biggest gold mine in the country was. It opened in the 1876 and was still in production as late as the 1990's. It started as an open cut mine, and so there is a very big hole in the ground. Which you will see pictures of later.

After leaving Lead, we drove back through Deadwood to I-90 to Sheridan, stopping briefly in Gillette, Wyoming. Dinner tonight was in the hotel restaurant, and now I'm off to reast for another long day tomorrow. Which includes a stop in Montana. Yeah! Another state I can cross off my list!

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Comments

[Pat]

Fun!
I'm loving your trip. Thanks for taking me along.