Thursday, August 19, 2010, Deadwood, South Dakota.
We spent most of the morning visiting and hiking around Devil's Tower National Monument which, as you all know, is America's first national monument. It's also quite spectacular. We saw a number of climbers struggling up the sheer rock. Looks like fun (yeah, right). Saw our first prairie dog colony on the way to the tower. Serry took 300 pictures of them, even though they all look exactly alike.
After the tower, we drove to Sturgis, South Dakota, home of the annual Black Hills Motorcycle Rally. We missed the rally by less than a week, when there were about 8000,000 riders (mostly Harley) there. Sturgis has now returned to its virtual ghost town state; just a few Harley guys riding around and a bunch of t-shirt vendors trying to unload millions of shirts. We had lunch in the huge, but largely empty Loud American Cafe.
Having watched and greatly enjoyed the HBO series, we then went down the road to Deadwood, where we strolled around the town and watched a re-enactment of the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and the capture of his killer. A little hokey but also fun. Lots of Harleys rumbling by, and lots of casinos. In fact, every restaurant was also a casino. Our hotel has a casino. The church probably has one. Also lots of tacky t-shirt/souvenir shops. Still, the town is kind of neat...for a day. Tomorrow we head to Mount Rushmore.
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