30 Years - Deadwood
Every good road trip deserves, maybe demands, top tier snacks. And decent fuel prices. All good midwesterners know what this means: Sam’s Club. (Sorry Costco people. Do they do fuel?) Before we left Missouri, we made a Sam’s run. Our favorites are their lunch meat, specifically the roast beef, and Boulder potato chips. We try to cut out seed oils as much as possible, and Boulder cooks their chips in avocado oil. Clint found a box full of mini bags and got a little excited: there were BBQ and salt with malt vinegar mixed among the bags of plain salt chips. This is his love language.
We indulged in a shrimp caviche (pronunciation anyone?) which is our newest favorite. It’s chopped fresh mangoes and jalapeños and onions and high quality shrimp. It comes with limes and you squeeze them over the entire mess and then eat it as fast as you can, so your husband doesn’t get more than his fair share of shrimp. 🙃 We also grabbed some buffalo chicken wrap pinwheels. They ended up being “oh my word we are in the middle of South Dakota and have run out of water and I’m going to have to lick some roast beef in order to breathe again” spicy. So maybe pass on those. But everything else was really great.
One more Missouri shoutout before we officially get on the road. We especially enjoy eating breakfast. We try to “front load” our calories and eat a very large, homemade breakfast together every morning. I (only slightly) resent the 5:15 wake-up call in order to eat with Clint, but he usually fixes it, and he’s basically a chef, so one must make sacrifices. It’s also the only quiet meal we eat together in a day, so we savor it. But since he is such a particular cook, and since breakfast is one of his specialties, if you’re going to feed him breakfast out, it must be exceptional. We are Kingdom Coffee regulars in Chillicothe, so we decided to check out their new shop a few minutes from Sam’s in St Jo. On our way out of town, we ordered two sausage breakfast burritos and two large coffees. Before we ever received our food, we were delighted that the price was under $20; but we were also extremely satisfied with the burritos. They were hot, fresh, and hearty and served with a high-quality specialty salsa. Their drip coffee was fantastic as usual. If you get a chance, support them in Chillicothe, Cameron, or St Jo. Bonus- 20 minutes later we were not abruptly looking for a truck stop because, um, our breakfast didn’t sit right. 😬
I took my time describing the food, because our day consisted of driving north along the Nebraska and Iowa border for (yawn) several hours, and then crossing over into South Dakota and driving across nothing but prairie for (yawn) several more hours and wait, where was I? 🥱 It took us over eleven hours to get to Deadwood. Anyone who has driven that route feels my pain. It’s only slightly better than driving through Kansas to reach Colorado. And you know the slightly off-color joke about Kansas, right? The one about all the trees on the Kansas Missouri border leaning toward the west because Kansas inhales quickly? (That’s what my mother made my brothers say in the late 80’s/early 90’s to replace the word sucks. I feel a little nervous at this very moment for having even typed that word out.) If you’re bored right now, reading this, then good. My point in all of this journaling is to bring you along. And driving west across South Dakota is BORING. The only time it is exciting is if you’re an 8- or 10-year-old boy, it’s August, and your family is headed to a pipeline job in WY at the exact same time that the Sturgis rally is kicking off in SD. That was the year 2010 and I will never forget the scream, as Doris our mini – van was surrounded by motorcyclists on I-90, “Mommmmm!!! It’s Willie Nelson!!!!” In his defense, the guy had braids, a bandana, and the (mostly unclothed) physique of the one and only Willie. We will never know the truth.
That is as good of a lead-in to the legends of Deadwood, South Dakota, as you’re going to get. We arrived at our historic bed and breakfast after 10:00, went straight to bed, and woke up to share our breakfast table with a literal goldminer who was just in from Alaska for the weekend. That was as authentic as it gets! He and his friend gave us some hot tips on things to do and we were off for the morning. We highly recommend the Ride Deadwood tour. Clint is standing in the doorway of the bus in the featured picture at the top of this post. You board it at the train depot and, yes ladies, there are public restrooms located on the back side of the depot so that you can take care of business before becoming a hostage on the double decker open air bus for an hour. The tour takes you from the depot to the historic Main Street. We had a wonderful guide who narrated the history of the gold-mining town as we passed different buildings and districts. She would always say, “We can’t prove that that last bit is true; but we also can’t prove that it’s not.” Which sums up most Willie Nelson stories I’ve ever heard.
This is the Iron Horse Inn which now serves pizza. We learned that all (most?) stables had a horse head in the masonry so that riders could locate the livery when they road into town. The bottom floor was built in 1893 and the upper two stories in 1896. It’s a beautiful example of the red sandstone many of the buildings in the town are made from.
We weren’t able to ride down the historic Main Street District because we were there on a Saturday and they were celebrating Wild Bill Days. The street was filled with vendors, open container restrictions were lifted, and there was live music. It was very busy, so we were glad to be on the bus tour. The tour guide’s commentary was very interesting, and very sad. Young women were lured to town with promises of marriage and then enslaved and trafficked. There are multiple hand dug tunnels under the town, because Chinese citizens were abused so severely that they couldn’t walk across town safely. The “seedy side” of town was known as “The Badlands” and was run by Al Swearengen. The sheriff at the time was Seth Bullock. Google claims he clashed with Swearengen, but the tour guide in Deadwood say he was bought and paid for. The trafficking of young girls in Deadwood didn’t stop until the regular men and women in the town decided to rescue them. They banded together and ran Swearengen out. That story made me proud. Good guys and no-nonsense women who are fed up tend to accomplish way more than the government. Get ‘er done!
Next, our bus took a very steep ride to the top of the town and we walked through the cemetery to view the graves of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. We learned that Martha Jane Canary was the oldest sister of a passel of kids that found themselves orphaned in 1868. Her family left Missouri headed west and both parents died along the way. Martha learned how to survive, provide, and basically bull-hockey her way through life to make a buck. She was pretty much the reality TV star of her day, spinning whatever persona of herself that kept the public purchasing her latest wild story. She was not ever romantically connected to Wild Bill and in reality, the only thing they have in common is being buried next to one another. Wild Bill has no real connection to Deadwood other than when he was shot and killed there. He threw a fit about being seated with his back to the door of the gambling house he was visiting, and he should have trusted his instincts and refused the seat. Sure enough, he was shot in the back forthwith. There are several lessons here that should be obvious.
One other interesting piece of (accurate, verifiable) history is the location of Sheriff Bullock’s grave. He was good friends with Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt had a favorite mountain where he camped and hunted that can be seen from the Deadwood Cemetery. In the picture above, you can see where two large mountains come together to form a "V". The smaller mound in the middle of the "V" is "Roosevelt's Mountain". When the sheriff made plans for his personal cemetery plot, he requested it be dug a quarter of a mile above the cemetery where Roosevelt’s mountain could be clearly seen. He desired to be in view of his friend throughout eternity. The other picture in the rotating banner is of the town of Deadwood.
On our way back down from the cemetery our bus stopped in front of Deadwood's 1899 Inn, the bed and breakfast where we were staying, to highlight its historicity, so we took a selfie. Dear reader, you can be the judge as to whether our selfie skills improved during the duration of our trip!
Once we departed from the Ride Deadwood tour, we visited the Adams’ Museum, named for William Adams who had a massive hand in shaping the town during its formative years. He built several of the second-generation buildings that went up after the early fires and invested much time and money into the city’s planning. His family desired that the museum be accessible to all, so it only requires a free will donation for entry. The main floor has cultural and civic history, and the bottom floor has natural history. It is an excellent quality museum, aside from the old earth and evolutionary science references which have long been disproven, and it is affordable for families. I think you could schedule an hour to an hour-and-a-half here if you needed to wait out a rainstorm or escape the heat.
And now for the best part- the food!!
We ate lunch at a renovated 1950’s filling station. One side was a coffee shop and deli. Our food was affordable and top quality. This is my barbecue ranch chicken salad.
The other side was a glass-blowing shop where we watched a live demonstration both while we waited and while we ate. Please enjoy the attached pictures and videos. This basically free entertainment was a highlight of our day and again, something a family could affordably enjoy while visiting Deadwood.
As we finished our lunch, a storm blew in and we skedaddled back up to our B and B where we enjoyed the mountain thunderstorm on the front porch furniture.
The rain settled in, so we took an afternoon nap. It might have been our absolute favorite afternoon of the entire trip.
For the evening, we walked back to the downtown area. Due to Wild Bill Days the district was loud and crowded so we escaped into a coffeehouse for a few hours, hid in the back, and talked uninterrupted. Parents of young children – if you know, you know. Then we walked to the Franklin Hotel for supper. I get migraines very easily from bright flashing lights, and there are very few establishments in Deadwood that are not full of gaming machines. We heard on our tour that the restaurant in the basement of the Franklin Hotel was dark and quiet, so we made a reservation. Clint had a sirloin. I had braised elk with gnocci in a cream sauce. They were both moderately priced and excellent. We would recommend it for a couple, or a group of adults, but it was a little pricey and upscale for a family on vacation with tired children. There were, of course, families with tired children, which is why I bring it up. Ahem. Enjoy this video of the main lobby of the hotel and gain insight into the gambling atmosphere.
We walked back to our bed and breakfast where we had to move from our suite to a smaller room that shared a bathroom with the rest of the hallway. Don’t recommend this setup, but we were grateful to have a decently priced room in a historic home during Wild Bill Days when hotel rooms were going for $400. Note: don’t visit during Wild Bill Days.
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