Moon Drifters: DEADWOOD, STURGIS, AND A WEDDING

July 27, 2013 - We took a little road trip through the Black Hills Area to check out a few of the towns. I wanted to see Deadwood because I watched the TV show and Ray wanted to see Sturgis. We headed north on 385 through more beautiful scenery of trees, rock formations and beautiful lakes...and I thought all of South Dakota was going to be Badlands.

DEADWOOD - In the TV show it is a gold town with miners, gun slingers and shady characters. In reality, it is a town that honors its past - good and bad. We arrive during 76 Days. Our timing was pretty good because the parade had just ended. We skirted around the main street and ended up at the cemetery. Its the first cemetery that I have ever seen that charges to walk through it. Since we didn't know who was there, we passed.

We walked down the main street and I thought I was in a town in Nevada. Meaning the street was full of casinos -- shady looking casinos.

Many of the older buildings have been restored and there is a walking tour explaining their heritage. Several of them were owned by Jewish business owners serving the men working in the gold mines.

There are several tourist buses in town and they were packed full of people. Also there is a city trolley that only charges a $1 per ride.

We found this cute coffee/ice cream shop for our lunch. We sat outside with dogs and were lucky enough to enjoy country western music next door in the bar.

While having lunch we saw this group heading to the rodeo...wait the rodeo is in the opposite direction.

A cornerstone of the main street is this hotel. Our final treat was this community band playing in front of a casino across the street from the hotel. Deadwood is an unusual town. It has around 1500 residents but on this day it felt like 15,000.

STURGIS

Well, here we are in Sturgis. I was prepared to see thousands of bikes, naked women, and all sorts of stuff. We were a week too early! We knew that. But we had seen plenty of motorcycles on the roads around Sturgis and expected to see more activity. In reality, this town is pretty quiet compared to Deadwood.

Evidently - Ray thought this might be in his future.

So many choices - Loud American Roadhouse or McDonalds.

WEDDING

Of course we couldn't just turn around and return to our campground on the same road we came in on so we took the road less traveled to Nemo SD in hopes of seeing more wildlife. We did see more bikes and a bride walking to the church. I loved it!

CROOKED CREEK CAMPGROUND

The Black Hill area is busy this time of year and we were lucky to find a spot. This campground is near the turn off to Mt Rushmore which makes it very convenient. The spaces are close together but most folks are out and about in their cars/bikes/etc. The wifi didn't work and put this blogger behind schedule. One the other side it did have a breakfast barn and I had all you could eat pancakes for $3.11.