Saturday May 20, 2023 - South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park to Deadwood SD

Another sunny clear blue sky morning here at the campground. More people came in last night but I don’t think it is full this morning. Our site is right on the Little Missouri River. No buffalo in site this morning (but there were two waving goodbye at the campground entrance on our way out).

Cereal for breakfast, coffee, tea. Today we continue south and enter the Badlands of South Dakota. We saw the HBO series Deadwood this last year and the actual Deadwood is south of us, and we are about due for showers and clean laundry again so Deb found a motel in Deadwood for tonight. Maybe even dinner out!

The camp cooking has been pretty easy. The induction cooktop has worked really well as long as you only cook one pot meals, which we have. And the electric tea kettle gets worked hard. We never seem to expend more than 20% of the battery between an evening of cooking, gas heater (it uses gasoline but also electricity to run the fan, etc) and morning coffee. So we think we sized the solar and battery about right.

So we left the park and did rubbish and recycling on the way out. Back on RT 85 (Theodore Roosevelt Expressway) headed south. We had to go on I-90 for a bit and then south on RT-85. This stretch of RT 85 is only two lanes and is not being improved like the section we did yesterday. We are guessing that the oil boom up in Williston is behind improving yesterday;s road so they have a better connection to I-94 and the outside world.

Today's RT 85 will take us all the way to Deadwood. The southern part of North Dakota is kind of flat and featureless with some grassland (grazing) and some wheat fields. Once we crossed into South Dakota it started to roll a bit more and soon the Black Hills began to show itself with even more rolling hills.

We stopped in Spearfish, SD for coffee and wifi. This is a pretty slicked up town but not too big. Deadwood is just below Spearfish and as we pulled into Deadwood we were surprised at how prosperous it looked. It is definitely a tourist town, and gold mining was active here until 2002. What we gleaned was that gambling really put money in the town pockets starting in 1989. And Wild Bill Hickok (who was only here for 6 weeks and got shot in a saloon) is the town theme. Much like Wyatt Earp and Tombstone.

We parked the van in the visitor center parking lot and walked through the historic downtown. Every other business had slot machines of some kind. Lots of tourist oriented business (t-shirt shops, posters, stickers, Harley stuff, the works.

We got coffee and ice cream and listened to a talk on the history of pistols in a side alley given by the town re-enactors. I think they do a gun battle later in the afternoon.

We hit the Adams Museum which was wonderful. The older lady at the front door (she was born here) filled us in on the town history. The museum is very well run and very well organized. And they have a two headed calf!!

Next stop was a walk up to the graveyard to see Wild Bill’s grave as well as Calamity Jane’s grave right next to Bill.  

Then off to the motel just outside of town and we walked down the street to a restaurant for a couple of good old burgers. The nice motel clerk offered to do our laundry for us in the motel machines, which we accepted. We tried to pay her something but she refused. Wow!

Another great day!

Odo = 8234

46 nights in the van