We headed out through the beautiful Black Hills -- this time through private lands with pastures and Ponderosa Pines that the beetles have yet to find.
Our first scheduled stop was Deadwood, SD, burial site of Wild Bill Hickok
and Calamity Jane.
For $1 each, we wandered through the cemetery set up a hill just above town – it had been in use from the mid 1800s-1950s. Catherine had extremely low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised.
The admission included a small “newspaper” complete with about 20 obituaries from a variety of the town’s characters. Denise sent copies to some folks with rather morbid senses of humor (take it as a complement if you didn’t get one). The paper highlighted the leader of the SD communist party, one not-so-well-liked fellow that was buried naked in a too-short casket and then, at the insistence of some town officials, exhumed, dressed and reburied, a multimillionaire that owned much of the town in the 1800s in the Hebrew section, and a short discussion of the now almost empty Chinese section (the bodies were sent back to China by relatives), and mentioned the deaths of tens to hundreds of kids buried in mass after now vaccine-preventable diseases swept through town. The cemetery itself was lovely with the lilacs just coming into bloom.
Catherine would have stuck anyone that died between October and May in a shed somewhere and waited until summer to fight the rocky soil.
The gift shop across the road had some interesting tidbits as well – about 1-2% of deaths in the 1800s were homicides and another 4% were suicides. Causes of death were often alcohol related with some odd accidents (a smashed thumb, for example) also relatively common. These folks were tough.
The town and surrounding hamlets had been built on gambling and mining and within the last 20 years declined rapidly. In Deadwood voted to a 1989llow large gambling establishments to come into town, with some of the revenue directed towards restoration of the historic district (no buildings can be torn down; they must be restored according to guidelines). Schools and other civic operations are supported. Amazingly, the casinos either are hidden old buildings or relegated around the corner from the historic town center and the town has come back to life – considering it’s at least a 2 hour drive from Rapid City which only has a very expensive airport, we’re not sure where business comes from, but it comes…
An overview of town from the cemetery:
Typical homes.
The historic/tourist district.
The original site of Wild Bill Hickok’s death. The re-enactment takes place across the street multiple times daily. We didn’t stay long enough to watch one.
We headed down the road a bit and then through Spearfish Canyon. East coast rivers just don’t know how to make steep canyons. Dances with Wolves was filmed here.
The Spearfish River as photographed from the driveway of a summer/vacation home. Many of the homes in the canyon are for sale. Catherine feels they’d probably be a good investment.
We took a short walk to Spearfish Falls which were spraying the trail due to their unusually high water volume.
Of course, we had to take the obligatory wildflower picture.
John once again proved his parking lot animal viewing theory. We saw a Black-Headed Grosbeak at the feeder. Oh, the theory is, if you want to see animals/birds, stay in the car preferably in parking lots and/or near bird feeders. Long hikes through the woods yield no animals.
We continued down canyon and saw the much more popular Bridalveil Falls -- it seems to be a midwestern tourist mecca. It requires only crossing the street for the best view -- no dirt at all.
We found the Termesphere Gallery in Spearfish, SD. Dick Termes paints all the spheres with special perspective -- sometimes both inside and out. One or two of them were neat and really took on a life of their own when gently spun. We're not sure what made them world famous, it didn't seem like they were very unique from Christmas ornaments. In any case, we didn't make a purchase, but saw more pretty flowers on the way out.
We finally got out of South Dakota and into Wyoming (a new state for Denise). There were plenty more cows on hills. These were rather scared of Denise and her camera.
We headed towards Devil's Tower. A huge granite rock that apparently formed when magma cooled underground a few million years ago, fractured in a honeycomb pattern as it cooled, and has been exposed recently as the soft dirt/rock eroded away. This rock is over 800 feet tall and we spotted it at least 20-30 miles away. We're getting closer.
See, when Catherine doesn't wear a very tight shirt and hike until she's red in the face, she doesn't look so fat. However, we're going to pretend there is a lot of wind, explaining the hair.
In any case, the prairie dog town distracted us. Catherine took a series of about 30 pictures of this little guy -- it looks like a stop motion movie. And, yes, prairie dogs are extremely cute. Everyone should go hang out with a prairie dog colony.
We headed up to what was supposed to be the main attraction, Devil's Tower. Denise was rather impressed with the rather large rock in the middle of nowhere. We did the slightly over mile loop around it. The vultures near the top looked tiny, but there were no climbers to be found. (The Native Americans consider the rock sacred and there is a voluntary moratorium on climbing in June. They put up "traditional" prayer bundles of bright cotton cloth.)
The boulder pile builds up as the tower erodes. Those are serious boulders.
These 3-7 side honeycomb bits are 10-20 feet in diameter. The look so little near the top.
Denise found a nice cool bench on this rather warm day. Notice the beautiful view behind her and the bench is facing the other direction.
The next photo is taken from the same spot, I just turned 180 degrees.
We thought about hiking around the prairie dog colony, but it was hot. And really, why go anywhere when they are playing 10 feet from (or on) the road? Catherine annoyed many people by going less than 5 mph through the colonies, but she was NOT going to be responsible for squishing a dog and they showed the same fear as bison on the road.
As it wasn't late and after talking with Master Googler John we decided to make the 3 hour drive to Dickinson, ND where there are no less than 7 major hotels. The drive was spectacular -- lots of pasture and cows and long straight roads.
We saw a pheasant and a Great Horned Owl perched on fence posts along the way. Catherine was very glad to no longer be driving as darkness fell in Dickinson. But the hotel parking lots were full of pick-up trucks. Apparently there is an oil boom in western ND. On a Monday night, every hotel room in Dickinson, ND was booked. According to the nice guy at the Holiday Inn Express, they hadn't had an empty room in over a year. But he hooked us up with the last hotel room in Medora, ND. It was a Grandmaster Suite or some such nonsense with a hot tub and fireplace in the main room. Most expensive night we've spent, but well worth it (of course, Catherine was pretty much willing to put nearly anything on Denise's credit card by nearly 11 pm). This was the first night in about a month's worth of reservation-free travelling that we've had a problem.
Because of the energy boom, there are lots of new oil wells going in and lots of waste natural gas being burned off. More on the construction around the energy exploration in "tomorrow's" blog. Night all!
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