...with a nod to Laura Ingalls Wilder...Little Beast on the Prairie...
...Westies on the Prairie...(actually they are irrigating said prairie)
Factoid: Pierre was named after Pierre Choteaux, Jr. a French-American fur trader. Just imagine if his name had been Fred Choteaux, Jr...the capital of South Dakota would be Fred, South Dakota. Then imagine a railroad which offered the following itinerary:
Start...Shit Face, Iowa (now called Des Moines)
Stop in...Pig's Eye, Minnesota (now known as St Paul)
End at...Fred, South Dakota (better known as Pierre)
...Okay, okay, enough with the lame jokes already. I know you crave the serious reporting to which you've become accustomed from your dutiful narrator/Captain. Let's deal first with the pressing question of the recalcitrant air conditioners...
...Even though it is August, here for your viewing pleasure is a screen shot of our current weather...
...that's right folks...50 degrees...bottom line...we have no idea how the air conditioners are working. The great news is that the heated floors and the furnace are performing flawlessly!! There, aren't you glad not to hear more about air conditioners??
...On to other news...this evening we dined at the Loud American Roadhouse and Saloon (heavy emphasis on SALOON) in picturesque Sturgis, SD. We chose this establishment over other such competing purveyors of spirits and vittles as:
...The Knuckle Saloon
...One Eyed Jacks Bar
...Full Throttle Saloon
...Side Hack Saloon
...Easy Riders Saloon
...anybody notice a theme here??
...Right about now you are saying to yourself.."{insert your name here}, why does the name Sturgis seem so familiar?"
... I'll answer that for you. It is simply the host town of one of the largest annual gatherings of motorcycles in the entire world...probably in the entire galaxy.
...Each year since 1938 hordes of motorcycles descend upon this Black Hills village of 6,625 people in early August to ride their bikes, race a little, drink, eat, smoke and generally engage in many and varied forms of debauchery. Inasmuch as this is a family oriented narrative, your chaste Captain will not catalog or describe the actual goings on here except to say WOW.
...Here are some shots taken today of the streets of Sturgis....
...last week, here is what it was like...
...the SD Department of Transportation estimated the crowd that week at OVER ONE MILLION, breaking all previous records by a wide margin!!' Locals even rent space in their lawns for campers to pitch tents and sleep.
...the Badlands...
...and even Badder Lands...(Certain precincts of Chicago and Detroit can be really baaaad also)
...pictures cannot do justice to the indescribable beauty of this grand landscape! We drove the Beast along the narrow roads with some trepidation as the drop offs were hundreds of feet down...
The drive we took, the Badlands Loop takes about an hour and has been described as one of the most spectacular drives in the United States. Personally, I believe it. (I think Opie agrees too...he stayed awake for the whole drive).
...For our loyal readers who have traveled Interstate 95 crossing the South Carolina border, you have been exposed to the kitschy phenomenon know as South of the Border. It is advertised by highway signs for a hundred miles north and south of the border so that one feels somehow unAmerican if they don't stop there.
...Well, South Dakota has its own version...it is called WALL DRUG.
...the place is GINORMOUS!! The rest of the town of Wall, SD can fit inside this place!!! Inside, you can pan for gold, get a haircut, eat, drink, buy Western Wear, purchase cowboy boots, buy rope, jewelry, candy, booze, outfit a mining expedition, etc. Hell
, they even have a DRUG STORE in there.
This area of South Dakota is known as the Black Hills. (An interesting moniker, since we saw exactly ZERO black people here...)
Notable among the towns in the Black Hills are Spearfish, Sturgis, Deadwood and Lead (sounds like LEED).
Let's take a look at Deadwood.
Factoid: Deadwood was very accurately portrayed on the television series of the same name. They even used the real names of the most well known "ladies of the evening"...
Factoid: Deadwood lies in a deep and barely accessible valley. Steep stone canyons surround this tiny village. Why then, would the settlers create a town here?? One word. GOLD. There was a wee glitch however. This land and literally millions of acres around it extending into North Dakota and Southeastern Montana were "given" to the native Sioux by the 1850's Laramie Treaty. (Your Captain cannot adequately explain how the U.S. Government could "give" this land to its existing owners and occupants...actually, your curious Captain can explain very little that this government does...).
Factoid: When rumors of a gold find reached Washington, President Grant dispatched Lt Colonel George Custer with his 7th Calvary under the guise of a science expedition to determine if there really was gold in "them thar hills". Well, wouldn't you know it, just when we give the pesky natives their own land, we discover that we've given away untold wealth in the form of rich veins of pure gold.
Clearly this cannot stand, so the Calvary establishes such an annoying presence there that the native Sioux recede into the hills to avoid the conflict which would surely occur if they stood their ground.
Inconveniently, especially for G.A. Custer, one of the young warriors displaced to make room for the gold rush community calked Deadwood was none other than the soon famous Crazy Horse. (Crazy Horse was not happy to cede his sacred lands to the lying white men who dug in the soil for the yellow metal...)
By 1876, the town was flourishing, with multiple hotels, saloons, several merchandise stores and of course gambling parlors. It was in one such parlor that the recently arrived Wild Bill Hitchcock was killed by a shot in the back by a Mr Jack McCall, who had the day before lost a sum of money to Wild Bill in a poker game.
Mr. Mcall was quickly apprehended and as quickly tried. (A saloon served as the courtroom, since a proper courthouse had not yet been erected). A jury of his peers found Mr. McCall not guilty as his defense was that he simply avenged the death of his brother who Wild Bill had gunned down in cold blood earlier in Kansas City. Case closed....but wait, there's more...Sheriff Seth Bullock, an honest man in the land of thieves, sent wires (telegrams) to Kansas and determined that Jack McCall had no brothers whatsoever, and in fact was suspected of shooting another man in the back while he was in Kansas. With Bullock in the lead, McCall was again apprehended, retried and properly hanged by the neck until dead. Yes, Deadwood was a colorful town indeed!
...modern Deadwood bar...
...the site of Jack McCall's cowardly deed...
...we ate the best meal of our trip so far here...we gambled here as well...we both won modest amounts...
...we noticed that there were many prominent Jewish pioneers who contributed to Deadwood's vitality.
...Leslie about to enter the actual site of Wild Bill's demise...
...you Captain surveys the #10 Saloon's gambling parlor...
...the Commodorable holding the "dead man's hand" Aces & Eights over a Nine...just like Wild Bill. (I think ole Wild Bill drank straight whiskey, not Corona beer as shown here. Beyond that, this is an eerily accurate depiction of that fateful August day...)
After a couple of great steaks, some gambling, and seeing the sights of Deadwood, we went back to our encampment in nearby Spearfish, SD.
...THE VIEWS FROM OUR CAMPGROUND WERE SPECTACULAR....
...the next day, we "set sail" for Keystone, SD, the site of...
...and also....
....you guessed it, didn't you...Mount Rushmore. Again, pictures cannot do justice to the majesty of this sight...
...a rarely seen side shot of George Washington at Mt Rushmore...
...in order to show our enlightened lack of bias, we also visited...
...the in progress monument to the great Sioux Chief Crazy Horse...
...this monument will dwarf any other in the known world...
...Leslie standing with the 1/36 scale model which is used for the blasting and shaping of the real one...This project is privately funded and will take generations to complete like the ancient cathedrals of Europe...
...leaving this interesting site behind, we ventured into Custer, SD...
...an interesting little metropolis characterized by a total lack of traffic....or tourists for that matter...
From here we took the old Jeepster on a wild ride through Custer State Forest...
...a donkey...(Democrat)
...a Buffalo...(there were no elephants to be seen...)
Factoid: despite what we Americans say, there are NO BUFFALO in North or South America. Well then, you ask, " What the hell is that hairy beast we can see out of Leslie's window??? Glad you asked. That there is called a BISON. Buffalo do not have humps. Buffalo live in Asia mostly, as in water buffalo.
...Ponder this. If early Americans had not insisted on using improper terminology we would be visiting Bison, New York, eating Bison wings, cheering for the NFL team the Bison Bills, etc. ( Oh, give me a home; where the bison roam...).
Anyway, back to the ride...
...rugged country...
...the Beast has carried us about 5,500 miles so far...
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