deadwood: no law can make it respectable

deadwood as seen from mt. moriah

deadwood was so named because when people came there in the 1870s looking for gold, all of the trees were...dead. they aren't anymore, thanks to deadwood capitalizing on its image as the classic old west town. but before i get started on that subject, on our way from rapid city up to deadwood we stopped at a local dive called the sugar shack, which served me on the most delicious burgers i've had, ever. and that really is saying something, considering that half of my caloric intake in the past week has been beef of some sort.

now back to deadwood. we rolled into town and checked into the saloon we were going to spend the night at: a place called deadwood dick's, named after a fictional character 'from' deadwood. the entire town has been declared a national historic landmark, and they have taken a novel approach to funding the restoration of the town: casinos. since they started allowing limited stakes gambling in the early 1990s, the town has boomed. now it is essentially a tourist trap, but one that is a far cry from gatlinburg, tn and other such towns. while it is kitschy, it is a historic kitschy. the town really is cute, down to the very informative visitors center located in the renovated train station. while it was raining, it wasn't too bad. to be honest, the re-enactors who perform every hour or half hour were more bothered by it than we were: they did not like to get their antique guns wet. the shootout in the street that we saw began, as i'm sure so many of them did, with a game of poker. i thought that they did a good job--it was certainly interesting.in addition to the re-enactment in the street, we climbed up to mt. moriah cemetery, also known as boot hill. it is here that wild bill hickok and calamity jane are buried. it was quite a hike--they put the cemetery on the top of a daunting hill because they didn't want to put it anyplace that someone might, someday, want to build. wild bill was one of the biggest characters in the 1860s and 70s. he was the fasted draw in the west, killing as many as 100 people, depending on who you listen to, and worked as everything from a professional gambler to a texas ranger. calamity jane, while she knew hickok while he was alive, became famous for capitalizing on him after his death: she claimed that they were lovers, thus making herself a national sensation. she too had numerous professions: everything from the world's oldest to dressing like a man to achieve her means. her dying request was to be buried next to hickok, and so she is.

the image to the right is of a make-shift shrine to wild bill--it's kind of small, but there is a mini bottle of jack daniel and a red lipstick up there amidst the flowers. which leads me to the second re-enactment we saw in deadwood: the murder of wild bill hickok by jack mccall. this took place in the saloon no. 10 downtown, where the murder actually went down--they still cover the floors with sawdust to give you an 'authentic' experience. this one was kind of neat because bill and jack were played by professionals, but they got audience members to fill in the other four characters. the story went something like this: wild bill had killed jack's brother. jack goes to find wild bill, who for the first and only time was sitting with his back to the door of the saloon--something he was normally very careful not to do. this is deadwood, after all. he and three other men were playing poker when jack comes in, circles around the table, and then shoots bill in the back of his head. the hand he was holding: black aces and eights, called a dead man's hand to this day. jack was tried in a kangaroo court and found innocent (bill had killed his brother), but was found guilty in an actual court and hung. thus ended wild bill. the man playing bill actually looked like him too--that's him to the left. if i look somewhat crazed it's because he was pointing a gun at my gut.

the only other thing we really did in deadwood was what the town was, and still is, famous for--gambling. i won a whole five dollars playing quarter slots! i couldn't convince mum to play poker, so that was pretty much the end of the gambling. between the two of us our final tally was minus one dollar. oh well, i never planned on being a professional gambler anyway.

the black hills

we have now been in the black hills of south dakota for two days, and what a beautiful two days they have been, as you can see above. yesterday was mostly filled with driving here from wall (which is only about an hour), getting settled, and getting the oil changed in my car. i have now driven about 2500 miles, crazy as that is. this is a region sacred to several indian tribes and now covered with state and national parks, as well as a huge national forest. we did get to see the crazy horse monument from a distance, but we weren't willing to pay the roughly $30 entrance fee, and i don't even think it really warrants a picture here. try it in about 50 years when they're further along.

we did get a chance to wander around rapid city a little bit, which i was really looking forward to. for those of you who i have not waxed hitchcock at before, his great film 'north by northwest' reaches its climax in rapid city/mount rushmore. in fact, as i learned last night, we are staying at the hotel in which some of the scenes were shot--the alex johnson hotel. it was built in the early 20th century by johnson, a railroad tycoon, to house the people associated with his line, and has since hosted five presidents, among them the two roosevelts.
rapid city (population about 67000) is quite nice! they've hit upon the touristy but not kitschy idea of putting life-size statues of the presidents on the street corners of the downtown. it was fun to run around chasing down our favorite presidents--i found teddy and fdr, while mum got pictures with kennedy and ronny. the nicknames we give presidents really can be quite funny. the picture to the right is of teddy and i--i found this to be particularly appropriate, for not only is he on rushmore, but he is almost single-handedly responsible for setting up the national parks system. AND he was awesome--i just ignore the whole kettle hill thing.

this morning we woke up bright and early, and i do mean bright, and grabbed a quick breakfast at a fantastic local bagel bakery on our way to our first monument/memorial/park: jewel cave national monument. we did the shortest tour, which was the only one that came free with our national park year pass. it was pretty cool--there are over 150 miles of mapped tunnels in the cave, and it is presumed to be the largest on the continent and the second largest in the world. it gets its name, however, from the crystals which cover over 90% of the cave in different forms. it didn't exactly photograph well, but that is it to the left. the short tour was probably enough for us--we aren't big cave people, but i was glad to see one. (wind cave national park is only an hour away).
after the cave we took an indirect route to the main event and one of america's biggest icons: mount rushmore national memorial. we drove down this highway that goes through custer state park, and was built explicitly to exhibit the monument. you go through these tunnels only to emerge with the faces of four presidents unobstructed right in front of you. the other mild wonder the road had were what they called pigtail bridges, which let the road literally do a curly-cue such as the one to the right--you'll just have to take my word that the circle continues to the left of the pic. it was really neat and definitely worth the extra half hour or hour it took us, and also gave us a better taste for the black hills themselves, such as the brief side trip pictured above. it was a nice drive, but chilly--it only got up to about 72 today, and it was only about 60 for our morning up in the hills--rapid city is at a lower elevation. the other quite funny occurrence was that we ran into this mountain goat in the middle of the road. he was just chilling, licking the center yellow stripes as cars slowed down and passed him on both sides. we speculated as to what he was doing--licking the remains of salt on the road? did someone litter? in the end we decided that we were not qualified to question the motivations of mountain goats. then again, i don't know if anyone is. at any rate, he didn't care.
we rolled up to mount rushmore, only to discover that we had to pay for parking--kind of cheap, considering we had bought the year pass, but it had to be done. they have a pretty nice museum and exhibits about how the statue was made--it took 16 years for gutzon borglum to construct it--and even then, he died six months before they ran out of funding and had to stop, leaving his son to carry on after him. he ran into all sorts of troubles--cracks in jefferson's nose and whatnot, but by the end of it he and his 400+ workers were really good at precision dynamite blasting. i suppose that qualifies as a skill. as i was expecting, it was over-run with tourists, but for good reason. i don't know if i have seen any other place where you can appreciate the beauty of both the creations of nature and those of man right next to each other. especially since borglum definitely appreciated the fact that he was merely a blip in time, and that while the people and ideas he was memorializing were worthy of it, they too have or will pass.

the badlands

i don't think there are words fully capable of recounting the beauty or strangeness of the badlands. science tells me that they exist on every continent, and that they are created by soft stones being extensively eroded by wind and water. i know that the badlands in south dakota used to be underwater, that they have found lots of fossils there to prove it. but seeing the badlands in person, really experiencing them, was like little else i had ever seen before. *note, if the pictures seem lackluster, it is not only because it threatened to rain all day, but because pictures in no way do the area justice.

we started off with a fairly easy half mile hike to what is called the door lookout. this involved walking a short way on a boardwalk, and then following markers as we meandered around on and among the stones themselves. we discovered that they look like they are going to crumble because, well, a lot of them do. while there are harder stones in addition to the softer ones, a lot of the badlands is crumbly sand. the picture to the left above and the one directly to above and to the right were taken on this hike. this lookout is also an extremely popular area, along with the window, because they afford such views and are accessible to just about anyone.
from there we headed out to saddle pass, where mum dropped me off at the bottom. saddle pass is a quarter mile very, very steep climb up to the top of a formation. i only barely managed to make it all the way up, and that may have just been because the idea of going down was even more terrifying. part of the trail i took is to the left, and me and the view from the top is just above. it was quite a hike, and i stopped at the top for a little while to eat an apple (it was lunch time) and drink some water. i was now on what was essentially a plateau at a higher elevation than the area behind it.

i started out hiking back towards the door, following markers and the footpath trod by those before me. i ran into a few other hikers, most of them over 60 and using walking sticks or ski poles, having taken an easier way to the trail than i had. it was about 4 miles from the top of saddle pass to where castle path met the road, so i knew it was a decent, but not overly-long hike. the first half of it looked much like the picture to the right--a path through the grasslands. i pressed on pretty quickly, for while i had my raincoat with me, i didn't want to try and maneuver the sandy paths after they became gooey mud.
walking around up there was very serene. except the few times when i met other people, it was just the sounds of my footsteps combined with the grass blowing softly and the crickets and birds chirping away to their hearts content. i also realized a few other things on my hike, like how odd a place the badlands really are. this is a place where quite a lot of endangered animals live, like the black-footed ferret, which is the most endangered mammal on the continent and had to be reintroduced to the area. at the same time, there are these giant pinnacles sticking up out of the ground. this is a place where the ground literally flakes away and there is little water, and yet it manages to sustain beautiful flowers and magnificent animals. what a place of contradictions.
eventually, the landscape became less green and more like the picture above. it was neat to get to see both the grasslands and the badland formations everyone thinks of when they think of this park--but it definitely has both. one of the coolest things i ran into was the formation at left: nowhere else did i see such a multicolored rock. this part of the hike became increasingly rocky and was harder to manage, but still not so difficult.

maybe a little before these colored rocks i decided to take a video, so that all of you could appreciate the 360 degree view from the particular point i was standing at. the video is linked below, and while it like the pictures cannot do the area justice, it is better than nothing.

after mum and i met back up on the road, we decided to take a back road to drive through more of the buffalo gap national grassland and another section of the badlands park. we didn't realize until we were already on our way that this meant an hour of unpaved roads. nonetheless, it proved to be worth it. not only did we get to see views like the one to the right, but we finally got to see what my mum had been looking forward to: buffalo! we happened upon a whole herd of them by the side of the road, which is actually somewhat unusual since they normally stay away from people. we also got to see a prairie dog village at the same stop--one even popped its head out for us, though it doesn't make as cool a picture as the buffalo. this alternate route also led us to such views as the one at the top of this post, which appears on a lot of the badlands postcards.

all in all we spent about 6 hours in the park, and i loved every minute of it. i think that john muir, one of the great champions of the national parks, was on to something when he said that 'everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.' my suggestion for the day: go find yourself a park, whether a city park, national park or something in between, and enjoy the beauty that God has given us.

on the road again

yesterday, which feels like years ago, we headed north and then west after our fllw tour. while wisconsin is beautiful, it was somewhat obscured by the rain, so we just drove as fast as we could, weather permitting. when we passed over the mississippi river into minnesota, we were greeted by some very ominous looking clouds coming over the cliffs. however, once we crossed said cliffs, the sun somewhat magically came out, much to our relief. (the picture at top was taken at the minnesota welcome center). after a few more hours of driving we decided to spend the night in none other than...blue earth, minnesota. of course, it was still daylight when we pulled into our motel at 9:30, so night at that point was a bit of a stretch. at this point we had spent most of the last three days driving, so we were pretty wiped. and minnesota, at least the rural southern part we drove through, was not too terribly exciting--much like the parts of wisconsin we had seen, though still pretty. and for the record, i did enjoy the parts of minneapolis i got to see when i spent a weekend there a couple years ago.

when we woke up in the morning, we discovered that not only does blue earth claim to be the home of the ice cream sandwich, but it is also home to a 60+ foot tall green giant. no joke--that's him to the left. we stopped for a quick gander and then, once again, hit the road. pretty soon we passed into the land where i have decided that dreams come true--south dakota. a lot of my desire to go on this road trip in the first place originated with sd--the badlands, rushmore, the black hills, and north by northwest, the great hitchcock film. we pulled into the visitors center at the first rest stop, and were greeted by a giant tipi, as wiki tells me it is now spelled. we discovered later that many of south dakota's rest areas have them--i suppose that if tourism was one of your state's largest industries that you would play it up too.

one of the first things we ran into in south dakota was just as bizarre as the jolly green giant--a rather large sculpture garden just sitting off the side of i-90. we decided to explore further, having had a review in its favor given to us by the biker couple at the b&b back in wisconsin. this is what we found:
and yes, that is a giant bull's head in profile towards the back. we wandered around a little, but not too far because we didn't want to have to pay to enter. my favorite was this fish, which was on the drive up from the highway to the rest of the pieces. this sculpture garden was outside of mitchell, and in mitchell proper we saw the under-whelming corn palace, which is decorated with corn on the outside, and has murals made of corn on the inside. originally built in the late 19th century to try and draw more immigrants to populate the region, it is little more than a hokey tourist draw. and i say that while still appreciating the history behind it and that it is frequently used as the town convention center for community events and basketball games. oh well, there you go daddy. i saw lots of dead and dried corn.


needless to say, we did little but stop and see it and then move on. we made it as far as wall, south dakota, which is as far as we were aiming to get. wall is, of course, famous for its drug store. why is this store so famous you ask? because it is. in the early 20th century the owners of wall drug realized that they did not have enough customers to keep themselves afloat, so they started to give away ice water and plastered the roads leading to wall with signs advertising this. soon their operation expanded and it became famous simply for being famous. it now occupies an entire block and sells just about anything that can pass as touristy or drug store related. it also has a good bookstore, specializing in local books, and still sells coffee for just 5 cents and gives away ice water. while almost as hokey as the corn palace, i think that wall drug is still worth a stop. if you find yourself near here, grab a coffee and watch the locals eat breakfast in the cafe and enjoy the fantastic collection of western art on the walls.

we spent the night at the sunshine inn, a nice mom and pop run motel in wall, and recommend it if you happen to find yourself here. we prepared for our day in the badlands national park, which i was very, very excited about.
this morning we started out at wall drug, where we both had 5 cent coffee and delicious gigantic cinnamon rolls. you can tell that it is early in the morning because my eyes are still practically closed. from there we headed out to the minuteman national historic park, located just a few miles from wall. for those of you in need of a history lesson, the minuteman missile system was in place for over 30 years during the cold war, serving to deter the soviets from sending any missiles our way. each one had the power of 3/4 of all of the bombs used during world war two. the stations, like the one pictured below, were scattered all across the plains states. today, this one is preserved as a historic site. the missiles were of course underground, manned by two people at all times, ready to aim their missile at a moments notice--it could have been in moscow in only 30 minutes, hence the name of the missiles. people driving by probably just thought that it was part of a power station or something. it made me glad the cold war was over--but then, are we really any less paranoid about national security today? after a quick stop, though, we were on to the badlands!