Vacation Days 9, 10, 11

I apologize for taking so long to update again, now I have to play catch up! Sunday was very busy until late, Monday we were on the road until late, and this morning I couldn't get the internet to work because we were too far from the office for the wireless to connect.

On Sunday we took our rental car and headed about an hour north of our KOA to check out Deadwood, SD. The cool thing about Deadwood is that the entire town is designated a National Historic Landmark. There are blocks and blocks of buildings that are from around 1880, which is amazing! Deadwood was home to many notorious people, such as Wild Bill Hickock. Our first stop was the Broken Boot Gold Mine, which was established in 1878, during one of America's last great gold rushes. It was a small place, but it was nice and cool inside and we all developed a new appreciation for what difficult and dangerous work mining was 100+ years ago!

Once we got there, we quickly realized Deadwood wasn't a place designed for kids. Ninety percent of the businesses in downtown had gambling inside, which was a little intimidating. Behind all of these gaming machines there would be restaurants, gift shops, etc. but there were all these signs up telling you all the rules if you brought children inside. Such as children must remain 4 feet from all gaming machines, they can't touch the gaming machines, they cannot hold any money that will be used in or has been won from gaming machines, etc. Well, when I take Noah and Amaya into any store, I can't guarantee I can keep them 4 feet from anything! Curiosity made me enter the Bullock Hotel (you know, it's supposedly haunted, unfortunately they didn't do the ghost tours on Sundays or Mondays), and the first thing Noah did was run up to one of the gaming machines (the whole lobby was full of them...didn't seem all that historical to me!) and start punching buttons! Anyway, we had a nice lunch there, enjoyed all of the historic buildings, and then headed three miles to the town of Lead (pronounced leed).

Lead is home to the Homestake Gold Mine, which was in operation for over 120 years! The most amazing thing about this mine is what they call the Open Cut. It's a HUGE "surface pit" from which they mined the gold. This cut is so big that they've actually had to move Main Street in Lead several times over the years. The last time they significantly enlarged the cut was back in the late 80s, and at that time they had to move around 80 houses in town!! The pit is 12,000 feet deep and about a mile across. Take a look at the pictures, see if you can find the "little" pink booth...I thought it was a trashcan, it was actually a shack big enough to hold 12 men! It was such an amazing place. We even took the trolley tour of Lead, which basically took us around the entire town (the town was created because of the mine, and it seems like everything in town was directly affected by the mine), and ended up at the mills and such that took the ore and broke it down into the gold.

Once we left Lead, we headed back to the campground for about an hour, just enough time to grab a quick bite to eat. Then we boarded the bus for the Crazy Horse lighting ceremony and laser show. For about 30 minutes before the show started, we were sitting outside watching Mother Nature put on a lights show of her own! I thought we'd be rained on before the show ever started, but all we got were a couple of sprinkles and then it all headed the other way. The show was nice, Amaya spent the whole time dancing to the music. It rained on us all the way back to the KOA, but had stopped by the time we got off the bus. We ran inside to grab some milk, and ended up running back to the camper when it started raining again!

Got back to the camper, realized our camper was having an electrical problem. So, got ready for bed using our flashlights! The next morning realized our hot water heater wasn't working either, so had to take showers in the bath house. Pavan was able to find a man who would come to our campground and take a look at the problem, since none of the RV repair places in the area could see us until later in the week. Basically, there is your chassis battery which runs the engine, and there are your house batteries, which run a lot of the stuff inside....such as all of your lights, the pilot on your hot water heater, controls on your fridge, etc. Well, for some reason our house batteries are charging just fine off of our chassis battery but won't charge when we are hooked up to AC power at the campsite. So, while we're driving the batteries are charging just fine. But after 2 days camped with the engine off, the house batteries go dead because they aren't charging from the land line like they should. Won't be a problem for the rest of our trip because we aren't staying anywhere for more than 2 days, but is something we'll have to get fixed once we get home.

OK...so we got a late start leaving on Monday because of the guy coming over to look at the RV. We had about 375 miles to get to Bismarck....375 miles of absolutely nothing!! We stopped at a WalMart in Spearfish, picked up some things, and then grabbed a couple of pizzas before we hit the road again. It was a beautiful drive, but empty. We saw a lot of antelope, some beautiful buttes that turned to huge rolling hills the closer we got to Bismarck. Drove through Sturgis and Belle Fourche, the geographical center of the USA. We didn't get to Bismarck until just before 10PM, so we ate the rest of the pizza and went to bed.

Woke up this morning to rain. They had said a few sprinkles in the morning and then sunny in the afternoon, so we just waited it out and washed 4 loads of laundry. (Had 5 loads to do, but they only had 4 washers, so did the last load tonight!) Pavan left at noon via taxi to pick up a rental car at the airport, a very nice mini van this time. We left around 2PM for Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. What a great place! It is built on a site that was home to Mandan Indians back in the 1500s-1700s. They were eventually wiped out by smallpox, and the remaining Indians moved north to join with some ally tribes...safety in numbers. However, there were reconstructed earth lodges and a great museum about the Mandan people. There was a guided tour of the lodges by a Native woman who was so knowledgeable, it was fascinating.

A hundred years after the Mandan left the "On A Slant" village, there was a fort built on the site to help guard the railroad as it pushed westward. Named Fort Abraham Lincoln, at one point it had around 650 infantry and calvary men stationed there, including General Custer and the 7th Calvary...they left Fort Abraham Lincoln and followed the Missouri River (the fort is right on the river) into Montana for the Battle of Little Big Horn. Not many of them returned...

So, we got to tour the reconstructed home of George and Libbie Custer...a guided tour by a man dressed in period clothing. It was a lot of fun. The funny thing is that the fort was abandoned in 1891. After the railroad was completed, they just had no need for the fort. About that time, homesteaders were coming into that area...they came onto the fort and dismantled all of the barracks and homes and used that wood to build their houses!! So, a lot of the older homes in theMandan/Bismarck area are build with stolen government property!

We left Fort Abraham Lincoln at 5:15 and rushed to get to our next stop, the Historic Port of Bismarck, for our dinner cruise on the Lewis and Clark Riverboat. The cruise left at 6:15 but we were supposed to arrive 30 minutes early. Tuesday nights are Famous Dave's cruises, you get to eat BBQ during the hour and a half cruise up the Missouri River. It was such a beautiful day, and such a great cruise. Afterward we walked around Keelboat Park (where the port is located) and saw a reproduction keelboat like one Lewis and Clark used on their trip on the Missouri back to St.Louis. OH, FYI...it was about 30 miles north of Bismarck where Lewis and Clark met Sakakawea! We've learned a lot about Lewis and Clark AND Sakakawea during our time in North Dakota!

Then we drove around Bismarck, drove through the capitol grounds where I took pictures of the Sakakawea statue. Then back to the campground, time at the playground, finishing laundry,etc. Now I'm officially caught up!! Tomorrow we leave Bismarck for Fargo/Moorhead. Will spend all day Thursday in the Fargo area.

More later!

Rebecca