Western RV Trip Days 10 – Spearfish Canyon, Lead, and Deadwood

On Wednesday, we drove up Spearfish Canyon and while it could be impressive, the lack of water in the creek and the smoky haze made it less so – the smoke moved back in after our first two days.  Angel Falls was just a trickle but there were a few dammed areas providing fishing holes.

We then stopped in Lead (pronounced Leed) to check out the Homestake Mine composted of an open pit and a deep tunnel mine and was founded during the Black Hills Gold Rush in 1876. As the largest and deepest gold mine in North America, Homestake produced more gold than any other mine in the world during its peak years. Over its 125-year lifetime ending in 2001, the mine produced 39.8 million ounces of gold and 9 million ounces of silver.  That’s 52 billion dollars at today’s gold prices plus the silver – I could live on that.

It is now the Sanford Underground Research Facility which houses multiple physics experiments in areas such as dark matter and neutrino research.

From there we headed to Deadwood for a bus tour of town and the Mt. Moriah Cemetery.  Since the town is pretty small, we actually spent most of our time in the cemetery seeing the graves of some of the famous residents such as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.  I know there is not many places a bus can go in town, but we spent half the tour in the cemetery and I would have liked to see more of town – homes, historic buildings, etc.

After dropping a few coins in the slots to support the local economy, we headed down to Charley’s Spaghetti Western Restaurant which has very good ratings on Trip Advisor and Yelp.  They have an interesting menu in that you get a choice of three pastas, three sauces, and meat.  I chose fettuccini, meat sauce, and meatball.  The meal also comes with bread, salad and spumoni ice cream.

Following supper, we walked a couple of blocks to the Bullock Hotel for a Ghost Tour.  The hotel was built by Seth Bullock (Bull-lock) who was one of the town’s early VIP’s.  He came to town to open a hardware business then ended up as the sheriff and both he and his wife were very influential in the development of the town.

The hotel is believed to be inhabited by super-naturals and is often studied and there seems to be sufficient evidence to support the claim.  We saw none during our visit but I did get to tour the hotel which was on my to-do list.  Notice the fine woodwork in the hotel - the old house I grew up in had very similar door frames.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/13/17 Event Date