MichelleHave you always thought that Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane were just movie characters? Well, they were real people who existed in the South Dakota area in the 1800’s. Deadwood, SD is an actual town which was founded when gold was discovered in the Black Hills. At its peak, Deadwood had 4500-5000 population. Today it’s just 1,270. Today’s Deadwood is a tourist attraction, and the historic downtown area has been renovated to give an honest representation of what it was like back in the day. Today there are casino’s (gaming dens), bars (saloons), tacky souvenir and t-shirt shops (I’m sure they didn’t have that back then), and a brothel (no, not a real one!)! Above Deadwood is the area’s Mt Moriah Cemetery, and it’s here that you will see the gravesites of Wild Bill Hickock (assassinated at 37 yo) and Calamity Jane (died in her later 40’s). In addition to these famous people, there is a walking tour around the cemetery that talked about the different sections such as, the Jewish section, the Chinese Immigrant section, the Children’s section, and some of the more notable townspeople. This might sound morbid but was quite interesting. From 1878-1880 every type of disease swept through this area: typhoid, smallpox, scarlet fever. If you didn’t lose a family member to one disease, you may have lost one to another disease. It was clear from the tombstones that people didn’t live much beyond their 40’s and 50’s, and if you lived to 60+ you would be considered quite old. There is much to see and do in Deadwood and the smaller town of Lead just up the highway.
Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway is a must do in this area. The town of Spearfish is very nice and feels more like a real town than a tourist attraction. The Scenic Byway starts here although I did it backwards and ended there. This canyon has lots of mixed tree forests: pine, fir, cottonwood, birch, and aspen. Amongst all this greenery are spectacular rock outcroppings of red and tan colors, mostly high on the canyon walls. Spearfish creek carved this canyon over the years and runs all along the highway. It is a beautiful river and there are numerous pullouts where you can get up close and personal. Some sections are smooth and slow, others are tumbling and fast. Eventually you get to a crossroads where you can take a short trail to see Spearfish falls, which was very much worth the steep hike. The falls was fairly tall and came over the rocks spread out like a fan. Very mossy too! Taking a gravel road from the main highway, I drove up to a beautiful picnic area at Roughlock Falls. You can either drive up like I did or walk a trail from the crossroads. The picnic area was built all around the stream and waterfall, where you could take walkways to the upper or lower portion of the falls. Picnic tables were spread out and private, set along the stream. I loved this area and stayed awhile before heading back down the main scenic byway, which continued to be beautiful at every turn.
In the Black Hills area I stayed at a free campsite on top of Mt Roosevelt outside of Deadwood, SD. Although I arrived on a Wednesday, most of the sites were already taken probably because Labor Day weekend was coming up. This is how I met Penny and her dog, Sweety; and Mike (unrelated to each other). They were both staying in one large site that had room for one more rig. Penny asked me a bunch of questions about what kind of camper I am, etc. then invited me to move into the last open space in their campsite. It has been a lot of fun having people to chat with for awhile each day. Mike is still working during the week since he works remotely. Penny is a few years older than me and is part time RVing on her own too. Her dog Sweety is aptly named and if I could steal her I would. The most wonderful dog!
And then comes one of the more unpleasant sides of RVing. I had decided to move on to the Custer, SD area for exploration, but was unable to get my RV slide to retract. I have always had trouble with it and even took it in for work under warranty. The ‘fix’ they did wasn’t much help and I’ve continued to have problems. This last month it had become quite a bit worse and on this day it gave up the ghost. Thank goodness for Mobile RV Technicians. I had to wait another two days before he could come out, but I was so grateful he would come out to my boondocking location at all. It was touch and go, but he was finally able to get the slide back in… inch by inch – using a huge jack to hold up the slide while he pushed it in. Whew! So what does that mean? He wasn’t able to fix it… that requires an RV Service Center that has approval to perform warranty work. Those are far and few between. There are no approved service centers in South or North Dakota, or Wyoming. Bretz RV is approved and located in Billings, MT; Nampa and Boise, ID. My thought was to return to my sister’s place in Boise and have the work done there, however Bretz is overburdened with warranty work for customers who bought from them and are NOT taking customers who didn’t buy from them. So, no luck for all 3 of those locations.
For now, I will finish my South Dakota travels with the slide ‘In’ and will sleep in the bunk area (the bed is in the slide). I imagine my future travels will take me to wherever I can get the RV fixed!
