Marathon Sunday

The Sturgis, SD area, where we've been parked since Saturday, has a ridiculous number of attractions and places we wanted to see. Unfortunately, our Saturday arrival was a little hectic.

We showed up at Rush No More RV Resort, and the campground was having a car show.

We had to navigate through hundreds of people and cars and dogs and golf carts just to get to the office.

Then the campground tried to park us on a site that was too short, with a big hump in the middle that our levelers couldn't clear.

So we had to be moved.

The second site is fine, and we didn't complain at all about the cracked sewer connection that you can pull right out of the ground.

Then we discovered that one of our drawers had opened while we were traveling. It got snagged by the slide-out when we opened up and tore off a big piece of trim.

So we had wine slushies.

Marathon Sunday

Sunday turned into a marathon day of seeing all the things.

We went from Mount Rushmore to Crazy Horse to Deadwood and back to Sturgis for dinner.

It was a full day.

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore is an iconic American landmark, and definitely worth seeing.

There's a considerable amount of history to this place that began as a way to attract tourists to South Dakota and took fourteen years to complete. Of course, there's another layer to that. The mountain is in the Black Hills, which are sacred to the Lakota tribe, and the land's history with the United States is, er...complicated. 

So, yea. Four presidents on a mountain is the short version.

During the summer months, there's a movie that plays daily about the history of Rushmore and apparently is a pretty good watch. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see it.

The crowds were manageable, though, so we snapped a few pics and moved on.

Crazy Horse

About fifteen minutes from Mount Rushmore is another massive mountain carving: Crazy Horse Memorial.

And unlike Mount Rushmore, this one is still being carved.

The project began in 1948 after Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear invited sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to create a memorial honoring Native American heroes.

Currently, it's a face and a hand. 

But someday it will show an entire man on horseback, carved into the mountain.

Deadwood

Then it was on to Deadwood, which is famous for gold, gambling, gunslingers, saloons, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and generally not being a very well-behaved town.

It's also the setting for the HBO series Deadwood, which is what originally made me interested in seeing the real town. (Highly recommend captions.)

Deadwood is obviously a tourist trap, but it's cute, and the history is fascinating. You can also easily see it in less than a day.

Here's Jason posing with Calamity Jane.

We did a little shopping, and of course, we had to visit the Wild Bill bar.

We did not pay the $20 per person to go to the basement and see the supposed room where Wild Bill was shot.

Because Deadwood got enough of our money.

But the bar that sits atop the original saloon location was fun. The bartenders were a riot and entertained us with stories about the historic town and the Old West.

We finished a very long day of sightseeing at Sturgis Brewing Company, whose twice-baked sweet chili wings get five stars from me.

Tomorrow we continue east through South Dakota and cross into Central Time.

I think crossing back into what we've been calling "real time" is going to be harder than going the opposite direction.

My body and brain are 100% on Mountain Time, and it's gonna take some doing to fast-forward.