On Wednesday morning, the day we were scheduled to leave
Rafter J's, we contemplated staying there a little longer because of the bad
weather that was predicted over the next several days: lots of wind and lots of rain.
But I just couldn't see paying $50+ a night when we could be
paying less than $25 a night in Sturgis so we decided to go ahead and move to
Sturgis.
We stayed at the Sturgis RV Park which is only a couple of
blocks away from town. Because of all the
rain and because I was trying to get caught up on the blog, we stayed in
Wednesday and most all of Thursday. The
wind was very strong with gusts up to 50 mph and it rained a lot too.
With the sun shining Friday morning, we decided to get our
10,000 steps in by walking on a bike trail that runs about the entire length of the
town of Sturgis.
Later that afternoon, we decided to take a drive over to
Deadwood and to Lead, South Dakota, two old gold mining towns. Deadwood is the only city in the US where the
entire town has been declared a historical landmark.
It started raining again and we drove on over to Lead which
was still an active gold-mining town up until about 20 years ago. This was a huge pit that had been dug out for
mining gold.
I couldn't even see the bottom of it.
After we got back to Deadwood, we parked the car and walked
down to Saloon No. 10 to watch a re-enactment of the murder of Wild Bill Hickok.
With all the rain, the town was pretty dead. What did I expect? After all, we were in DEADwood. :)
We were getting hungry and so we had a good ol' greasy
hamburger and french fries at Mustang Sally's.
It was delicious!
On Saturday, the rain finally stopped and we decided to get
out and see the sites. Sturgis is pretty
dead this time of year.
But come the first week in August, the population of the
town increases from a little over 6,000 to about 400,000 to 500,000 when
motorcyclists from all over come to Sturgis for the largest motorcycle rally in
the world. We rode out to the Buffalo
Chip...
...which is where thousands come to camp, listen to the
musical groups that come, and...whatever else?
These fields look pretty quiet now but in a couple of months
it will full of motorcyclists and campers.
Bear Butte could be seen back in the distance.
On the way back to town, we stopped (along with the other
picture-taking tourists) at the Full Throttle Saloon which mainly just sells T-shirts this
time of year.
They had just about anything inside the saloon...
...including Emmitt, a donkey who lives inside the saloon and out (as evidenced by the poop we almost stepped in).
We walked around back and that had just about anything out
there too.
After leaving Sturgis, we headed up to Spearfish where we
could drive the Spearfish Canyon trail.
The creeks were very high from all the recent rains.
And this waterfall along the Spearfish Canyon trail...
was really gushing.
The Spearfish Canyon trail ends up back in Lead.
After leaving Lead, we headed back to Deadwood hoping to
catch one of the gunfights we didn't get to see on Friday because of the
rain. Deadwood is a beautiful old town
with brick paved streets.
We walked down the street to where the
gunfight re-enactment was to take place.
The spectators were already starting to line up on the
street.
The sheriff had all the kids come out to the middle of the
street at the beginning of the show and swore them all in as deputies.
\
Then, they had the gunfight re-enactment which was actually
based on a real gunfight.
The same guys who played Wild Bill Hickok and Jack McCall
the day before in Saloon No. 10 portrayed some other gunfighters and ended up
"dead" in the streets of "Deadwood" today.
After all our sightseeing and entertainment, we decided to
head back home for some peace, quiet, and leftover vegetable soup.
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