Day 4: Hill City, SD to Buffalo, Wyoming

We all enjoyed the all-you-can eat pancake breakfast at the KOA Palmer Gulch although we ended up with way too many pancakes. The kids were hoping to go on the jumpy pillow a few more times but it didn't open at 9 like the schedule said it did.

We left around 10 am to make our way through the windy Black Hills roads to Deadwood, SD.

For anyone who was worried about the missing joystick to my PacMan game, it was found underneath one of the seat in the RV. Phew. The joytick is less than one inch long so I had really given up the hope of ever finding it again.

My first impression of Deadwood was that it reminded me of Galena, IL with all the houses on the hills and the old fashioned look of the town. Deadwood is a historical town in the middle of the Black Hills that began as a gold mining town in 1876 after a rich gold deposit was discovered in Deadwood Gulch. Deadwood is named after all the dead timber in the hills around the town. Deadwood soon became a lawless town full of salons, brothels, and gambling parlors. When the industry switched from gold mining to deep mining, the town became more prosperous and a bit less wild. The town fell into harder times after World War II. 1n 1961 the entire town became a National Historic Landmark. In 1989, Deadwood became the first place outside of the state of Nevada and Atlantic City to allow legalized gaming in the US, which rejuvenated the town.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally starts this Friday so Deadwood was crawling with bikers because it's only 30 miles from Sturgis. We tried to avoid all of this and walked up a very long hill to the Mt. Moriah Cemetery, which was not an easy hike for the kids. The cemetery is best known for being the resting spot of both James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, who was shot and killed in Deadwood, and Calamity Jane who wanted to be buried by Wild Bill Hickok because she was in love with him. Sadly he was not in love with her. Wild Bill Hickok is probably the most famous historical figure of Deadwood, but he actually only lived there for one month. He went to Deadwood to find gold but instead got shot during a game of poker by a man named Jack McCall who claimed that Bill had killed his brother.

The cemetery was beautiful, surrounded by pine trees with a view of all of Deadwood and Mount Roosevelt. Diego wanted to walk the path up to the extremely high grave of Seth Bullock, another prominent figure in Deadwood history. Bullock (no relation to Sandra, as far as I know) helped make Yellowstone a national park, opened a hardware store in Deadwood in 1876, and then became Deadwood's first sheriff after the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok. Bullock was also friends with Teddy Roosevelt. Seth Bullock's grave is about 750 feet above all the other graves because he wanted his grave to be as high as Mount Roosevelt which is across the way. Seth Bullock is played by Timothy Olyphant in Deadwood, the HBO TV show and movie, which I now really want to watch.

After the cemetery we walked down to Historic Main Street. At first glance Main Street was incredibly charming. Upon closer inspection, it was full of little casinos and tourist shops. Even the old Bullock Hotel now has two gaming rooms on the ground floor. We ate lunch at a place called Stockade, which fortunately had available outdoor seating, which was not easy to come by and totally necessary because there were hundreds of bikers not wearing masks all over the place. While waiting for our food, Luca, my dad and I walked down to see a reenactment of shoot out where a man named David Lunt got shot in the forehead. According to local lore, after he was shot, David walked through Deadwood for 67 days before he finally took a nap one died and died.

After lunch we walked to the Adams House, a beautiful Victorian home built in 1892 and first owned by a Jewish immigrant named Harrison Franklin who was involved in mining and liquor. He eventually sold the house to his son Nathan for $1. Nathan Franklin started a successful drug store in town. It appears that a good way to become successful in South Dakota is to open a drug store. Nathan also served two terms as the major of Deadwood during the 1920s. He sold the house to a man named W.E. Adams, a businessman and philanthropist, who lived in the house for many years. He also served six times as mayor of Deadwood. His second wife sold the house to Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission and it was eventually turned into a museum.

Fortunately we were the only people on the 40 minute tour. I was amazed at how patient and well-behaved the kids were during the tour. Luca and Alex did keep trying to touch the many interesting artifacts and almost all of their questions were asking how people died, but they really impressed me with their interest and stamina. After the tour I asked Diego if he liked it and he responded with a very enthusiastic, "I loved it!" I come from a long line of people who love touring historic homes and I am pretty hopeful that this will continue with my children. They also didn't complain once about wearing their masks. Their favorite part was the jar containing homemade cookies that were almost 100 years old and still have not grown mold.

We went back to the car to make our way to Devil's Tower. We were super excited to cross the state line and arrive in Wyoming. I don't know about you but I think driving into a state you have never been to, even at the age of 47, is kind of special. Devil's Tower is an 867 foot tall rock formation that became the first US national monument in 1906. It is a the end of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the interest of time, we decided not to get as close as we initially wanted to. We did stop and take a few pictures and got to see a huge field of prairie dogs who were barking like crazy. The kids were more excited about the prairie dogs than Devil's Tower.

We had to drive another two hours to get to our next RV park, the Deer Park Campground in Buffalo, Wyoming. The sun was setting as we arrived in Buffalo. The kind couple that runs the campground seemed relieved to see us because they had been calling us to see when we were arriving. Cell service was very spotty so they calls never came through. We talked to them a little bit about Deadwood and all the Sturgis bikers there. The man told us that there are expecting 250,000 people there this year and it will be the largest mass gathering since Covid started. I find this rather frightening.

After checking in, we were all starving so we drove the RV into town to go to Hardee's. Only the drive through was open, so we had to park the RV at the closed Taco John's next door and walk ourselves through the drive through. It's a little more complicated than you'd expect to order through a drive through when you are not in a vehicle. When we walked to the window to get our order, the woman said to us, "Our ears are shattered." I guess we were so close to the speaker that we were screaming in their ears. Oops.