Deadwood, Custer State Park, and Parts & Pieces of Rapid City and Sturgis

(Blogger’s note: I am still trying to get the technerds at WordPress to assist me with my photo issues, which I am sure is due to operator error, but since I am a cheap b@$t@rd and don’t pay for the premium version, the help is in slo-mo mode. But I have sort of stumbled on a way to post my photos and keep their portrait vs. landscape integrity. I will be posting pics in the “tiled gallery” format when I have the two formats mixed. I will not be able to caption them. But if I post a section containing only portrait style pics, I will continue to use the “gallery” or individual modes. Those I will be able to caption. OK, enough nerdiness.)

We found a home at Three Flags RV Park between Rapid City and Sturgis. With trying to get some repairs done, we jumped on a one month stay here. This was a clean, little park right on Hwy. 90 and like all the other parks in the area I imagine it will be a zoo in August due to a few biker enthusiasts who like to frequent the area during a yearly motorcycle rally. (OK, so the town is generally about 6,500 residents until the rally starts, then it burgeons to the vacinity of about half a million folks!) But, whewwww, we’re safe for now, it only being May.

Gee, I wonder why they call it “Three Flags RV Park”?

We made an initial run into Rapid City to get a quick feel for the town of about 75,000 folks. It was pretty spread out and when we got to a kind of center of town, we stumbled upon something called the “Fruhlingfest-Spring Market”. According to one of the local attendees, Fruhlingfest is a German Springtime festival. We were disappointed in that we kinda expected it to be like a farmer’s market, but there were no farmer’s fare. There were several beer vendors, some serving up flights of tasters, and some vendors of things like local art and jewelry. They also had a stage with live band. Until that moment I don’t think I have ever seen a git-tar picker dressed like a hot dog.

Deadwood was in our sights for a visit so one of our better weather days (lots of rain and WIND, so far) we headed over sans Woodrow Wilson. Deadwood is quite the little tourist town, famous for being the town where Wild Bill Hickock was murdered. We walked the main drag, had a nice lunch at the Deadwood Social Club, and checked out the infamous Cadillac Jack’s Gaming Resort. After donating a couple of bucks to Jack, it was time to head back to civilization.

We wanted to drive the loop around Custer State Park, so we loaded Woody up and headed out. Now, we have been to Mt. Rushmore and in the area a couple of times, however I don’t think we covered the bulk of Custer State Park, so parts of our drive took us on a revisit (mostly the area of Needle’s Eye) while we got to access more of the park than previously visited. We got to see a lot of tatankas and Pronghorn, as well as a few Prairie Dog colonies. We got to view scenic areas like Stockade Lake, Sylvan Lake, and the first public school in the Black Hills. The Glen Erin School taught the young’uns from 1882-1920 and as it stood was in really good shape. We stopped in beautiful downtown Custer for lunch at the Mt. Rushmore Brewing Co. and had an outstanding portabella mushroom “burger”. The beer, meh, not so outstanding. Jeanne (the Jeep driver, I drive the bus) tells me all in all we drove about a 200 mile distance for the day.

Although we have already been to Sturgis, we wanted to revisit and assess any changes. Not a lot different this time around. We stopped off at the Knuckle Brewing Co. for snacks and a taste, not excited about any of the fare. Then we wandered out to see the area of Buffalo Chip for our first viewing. They tend to draw quite the big name talent for the rallies, and “the Chip” covers a pretty big area. None of it was open, but we did get to see it nevertheless.