Kat got me good this morning. We keep parking in these places where we aren’t sure if we are really allowed to be and keep thinking we are going to get a ticket. This morning she told me we had one. I am not sure why I believed her, maybe because I didn’t sleep well at all but I was bummed…she was kidding. Another free night for us, nice.
We drove down into Deadwood and found a place to park. We walked into town and found a bus tour that we hopped on to.
The tour took us through the town while the driver told us all about the history of the gold rush and how the town was established and why it is famous, mostly focusing on Wild Bill. The bus then went up to the top of the hill to the cemetery where Wild Bill is buried. It was very fascinating and fun. We were happy we decided to pay the $8.50 and do it.
We walked around the town for a bit after and took more tourist photos and looked in many souvenir shops; realizing neither one of us needed nor wanted a sparkly, fringy, hot pink shirt that said “Deadwood” on it we decided it was time to head back to the Winnie and head to our next destination, Mt. Rushmore.
Kat slept most of the short drive there which was good because I made a few wrong turns, that she doesn’t know about, but thanks to our trusty GPS, which we have named “Betsy” we got back in the right direction. I woke Kat up when I yelled “oh my gosh!” as we got into the town before the monument as I saw the best thing ever. It was this slide thing where you take a ski lift to the top of this mountain and then you sit on a little sled type thing with wheels on it and go down a 2,000 foot luge track. So now you understand why I couldn’t contain my yell even though Kat was sleeping. It was for sure a must do. We parked, signed some release forms that neither one of us read, and jumped on the lift. It was so fun I could have done it many times over and over but there were four dead presidents carved into rock waiting for our arrival.
Mt. Rushmore was beautiful; both Kat and I agreed that it was smaller than we thought it was going to be (that’s what she said) but great anyways. On the way up the hill Kat mentioned to me what her main motivation for going to Mt. Rushmore was, other than just wanting to see it. She told me that it was the only place that her Papa hadn’t been to, so now she can say that she has officially been somewhere that he hasn’t been and even if he does go there she can always say she went there first.
Many photos later we were back on the road now heading to Colorado to see my Papa. His 60th birthday is tomorrow and I am so excited to see him. It has been almost a year since we have seen each other. The fact that tomorrow is his birthday makes it that much better.
At the moment we are in Cheyenne, Wyoming at a diner where we have been for the past four hours. It is the first place we have been in many days that has internet so we are going through our pictures and updating our blog. We are trying to figure out if we should stay here for the night or drive the last hour and a half to my dad’s house and park out front in the middle of the night so when he wakes up in the morning we are there…guess we will see where we end up. All I know is that a shower is first on my list of things to do since neither one of us have done so since Friday. Life on the road is fantastic.
Photos for this part of the trip can be seen at: www.stopbathstudio.com/south_dakota
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