Day 153, June 27, The Black Hills and Deadwood, SD

 Honestly, why must I endure P-Days. I have less and less patience with this one day each week set aside for laundry and groceries cause there’s so much exploring awaiting me. Hurts my motor to go so slow. Today we hurried through the necessary errands, then headed into …


Deadwood, South Dakota, one of the most charming Wild West towns I’ve had the pleasure to explore. The entire municipality is listed as a National Historic Distract because it maintains its historic buildings and old western persona. A booming, rough-and-tumble, gritty, gun-slingin’, shoot-‘em-up cowboy town of the 1870’s when gold was discovered in them thar hills, the place is now a quiet, uber-clean, family friendly tourist attraction. We coulda spent a lot more time here, but we hit these highlights:

* a reenactment shootout on Gold Street and Main based on actual events from wild days now past,


* a tour through Saloon #10 where Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane drank, partied, and generally caroused,  




* a reenactment of Wild Bill Hickok’s infamous life, card game shoot-out, and murder,





* Black Hills Gold jewelry stores and Wild West souvenir shops, 



* the museum showcasing Hickok’s Pearl-handled six shooter revolvers, 


* and a jaunt down historic Main Street complete with hotels, saloons, casinos, and eateries, 





The quaint town quite impressed me. Sufficient tourist and gambling income has given Deadwood the means to keep the place pristine, the 150-year old original buildings up to date, and overall a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon and evening.

Good deeds: Super easy and way gratifying; we paid for the guy in line behind us at Subway. He looked like he could use it, and he never knew it was us. 

Another fun trick of mine is to leave $5 worth of quarters in the change machine at the laundromat. Today I watched as an honest guy found it and asked everybody in the joint if it belonged to them, then announced that he’s happily take the quarters but would return them if the owner materialized. I love watching the result; all have honestly tried to find the rightful owner except one man who jumped right up and claimed it as his own. 

Yet another deed today was the handshake with our Wild Bill Hickok actor; he was fabulous, and Aaron slipped him a $20. 

Lastly (today musta been a good-deed bonus day), I purchased Aaron a Black Hills Gold wedding band. He’s been wanting one for literally decades and lusted after a particularly nice one all afternoon. Honestly can’t say which one of us is the more blessed.



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