Day-5 Jul-12-09

On Sunday we headed out to a few interesting places. We rode through Spearfish Canyon, visited Devil's Tower, and the town of Deadwood.

We covered about 260 miles in 9.5 hours, with about 5 hours of actual riding time.

Spearfish Canyon is not really a tourist area, but it is a well known scenic bike route in the Sturgis area. The road winds through a deep gorge surrounded closely on both sides with sharply rising rock walls. The road has mostly sweeping turns, and is a fun ride on the bike. Below is a waterfall we saw along the road, running down the canyon wall.

Next, it was on to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. A pretty strange site to see this large monolith jutting out of the earth in an otherwise relatively flatland area! It is actually a volcanic neck, that rises about 1250 about the surface.

Roughly 4000 people each year climb the Tower, today we saw a few on the face. Below is a fellow who appeared to be managing climbing lines for another climber up above him. The zoom on my new little pocket camera does a pretty good job of capturing the climbers.

Here is the other climber who is higher up the Tower!!!

Zoomed out a little bit... if you look close, you can see the 2 climbers shown in the photos above. Lennie and I were going to climb to the top, but we left our climbing gear at home and, besides, we only had a couple of hours of free time.

Near the base of the Tower, there was a huge field filled with prairie dog holes and (of course) actual prairie dogs. Here are a couple that were out of the their holes eating some grass.

One last shot of the Tower from about 3 miles away (with big red in the foreground)

Next, we headed back to Deadwood SD. For those who have not seen the made for HBO series (appropriately named "Deadwood"), you should give it a look. Basically a Sopranos in the old west, and my favorite HBO series of all time!! Pretty entertaining, with some loose historical accuracy.

Deadwood was an old mining town that sprung up when people found gold in the area. The town was actually illegally set up on Indian land, and was pretty much lawless for many years.

Below is a photo that shows the original location of Saloon #10 where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker. If you ever heard the term "Dead man's hand", it came from this incident. Bill was holding a two pair hand, Aces and Eights (all black cards), when he was murdered. No one is really clear on what the kicker card was, but the HBO series used the 9 of diamonds.

To entertain us tourists, the locals still wander the streets of Deadwood shooting each other over poker games. We witnessed the shootout below as we walked the streets shopping for t-shirts and other trinkets :) The locals are shooting real .36 caliber cap and ball revolvers (without the balls of course).

The poor fellow below was not fast enough on the draw today. He was left on the street for the local sheriff to deal with.

We also rode up the road to the Mount Moriah Cemetery where Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are buried next to each other. The original tombstone is long gone, as it was made of wood. It fell apart and was stolen, pieces at a time. It has been replaced by a large stone and bust of Bill.

Tomorrow we head off to Rushmore and Custer State Park.