With just about a week to go, we are still doing some last minute planning for the trip. We have the first 30 or so days planned in some detail, but not the last few days of the trip when we are heading back home from Yellowstone. We are spending three nights in South Dakota but based on the number of things to do we should have planned more nights, especially in the Black Hills area.
The first night is in Deadwood and that looks like an interesting tourist town. Deadwood was a gold mining boom town back in the late 1800’s, but it is also famous for being the place where Wild Bill Hickok was killed playing poker in 1876. It is probably even more famous today from the HBO series, but as we haven’t seen any of that we will have to stick to history. They re-enact the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok several times a day and hopefully we will be able to see one of them. Our hotel there is also a casino, so if I ever draw aces and eights, I’m folding.
Our main reason for stopping in Deadwood was that it is close to Mount Rushmore which we are seeing the next day. What we also discovered is that there are a lot of other interesting things to do in the Black Hills. In addition to Mount Rushmore, we are now going to try to squeeze in a 2-hour train ride on a replica of an 1880’s train, a visit to Wind Cave National Park to do some cave exploring and a scenic mountain drive through Custer State park for some animal watching. That is going to make for a pretty full day and doesn’t even leave us time to visit the Crazy Horse monument. Oh well, there are only so many hours in the day. When that day is done, we spend the night in Rapid City.
The next day is spent travelling across South Dakota to Sioux Falls, but we are taking some detours to see Wall Drug, a drive through the Badlands National Park, the Corn Palace in Mitchell and maybe a stop at a prairie dog town along the way. It is going to be another long day.
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