After staying up late to watch 11 innings of baseball from game 6 of the World Series, we slept in! Once we got up, got ready, packed and checked-out of the hotel, we made a trip to Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood. This is where ‘Wild’ Bill Hickok and ‘Calamity Jane’ are both buried. I remember from when I was younger about how Wild Bill was killed during a poker game, but I didn’t remember much about him. I read the Wikipedia page on him and on Calamity Jane and got quite an education on both of them. I’ll leave it up to you to read it yourself.
Anyway, we made our way up the road to Mount Moriah Cemetery. And I do mean UP the road. The grade on this road was INCREDIBLY steep! I don’t remember seeing any signs as to how steep the grade was, but let me tell you….it was STEEP! I almost had to downshift to a lower gear to get up the hill.
As has been the case on our trip, this, too was Closed For The Season! However, it was free for us to go in to the cemetery and find the grave site for Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. Even THAT was quite a hike ‘up’ to the grave site. Those hills surrounding Deadwood are STEEP! Oh yeah, I already mentioned that! Once we were there, we stayed for a few minutes, took a few pictures, and then headed back to our car.
And went DOWN the steep hill….
After stopping to put some air in our tires, we were on our way. We headed back to the Crazy Horse Monument, because I wanted to go visit the gift shop and buy their video about the carving of the sculpture. We talked to Paul again and thanked him again for his hospitality towards us, and then headed over to the gift shop. We also looked through their museum, which we didn’t have time to do yesterday. After making our purchases, we headed on our journey.
We were headed to Valentine, NE so I could take Carrie to the Peppermill Steakhouse. I used to live in Mission, SD and attended church in Valentine, among other things. I used to have some AWESOME steaks at the Peppermill, so I wanted to share that experience with Carrie.
But first….
We had to get from Crazy Horse to Valentine. We drove almost 300 miles that day in some of the most beautiful scenery through the black hills of South Dakota. Along our journey, we drove through Custer State Park. As we came up on the park, I had to stop the car, because there were 2 buffaloes in our lane. Let me tell you something. When you see 2 buffaloes standing in your driving lane licking something on the pavement, you stop and let them do it! We took some pictures and video of them (as I drove past them, Carrie was recording them and said “Hi, Buffalo!” as we passed each one), and then moved to the other lane to be on our way. Then up the hill, we saw a sign that said, “Buffalo Are Dangerous. Do Not Approach.” I laughed and parked the car by a historical marker near the sign so I could go and take a picture of it.
We made our way through Custer State Park, then got on a 4-lane and headed to Nebraska. Both of us were puzzled why this was a 4-lane highway. There was not a lot of traffic on it, and there was really nothing but land, land, and more land as far as the eye could see. We saw a number of ranches as well, but mainly just land. We finally saw Chadron, NE up the road from several miles away. Then once we got to Chadron, we headed east for 2 1/2 hours where we saw land, land, and more land, along with some ranches and the occasional small town of 125, or 98, or 13, or 115 people. Northern Nebraska is a very sparsely populated area!
We finally made it to Valentine, NE shortly before dusk, and enjoyed a DELICIOUS steak dinner. Then we checked in to our hotel and watched the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers in Game 7 of the World Series! Way to go, Cards!
~Tim