Starting off in the town of GarryOwen, which I assume is named for the entire village kicking a ball in the air and running after it. The countryside continued to be epic.

After being blown-away non stop by all I have seen on this trip, Deadwood / Black hills was my first real disappointment. I don’t know if that is the ara itself or if the road is taking its toll on me. Riding into the Black Hills you are welcome by gross looking flashing signs for hotels bragging about tubs or Cable TV.

The town of Deadwood itself I expected more from, it felt like a few places all claiming to be the location of the same handfull of attractions, and it felt like many were just fronts for slot machines / gambling parlors.

I am of course a hypocrit, as if the tourist swag included a shirt of Mr. Wu calling Al Swearengen a cocksucker I think it might have gotten back into my good graces.

The next stop was Mount Rushmore which again didn’t lift my spirits, Superman clearly lied to me about the scale of things and stupid as it is, I was a bit huffy that despite my national park pass they wanted me to pay for parking and then walk along a collection of tatty flags for a view not wholly superior to what I could see from the road.

But things really turned around when after following my GPS longer down a logging road than made any sense I saw some wild turkeys in the “wild” and then got to Crazy Horse. The whole story of the Crazy Horse site delighted me. If people who never lived in this area can be carved into our mountains, we will do a bigger version for one of our heros. They hired a Polish-American guy with no expereinnce of making something on this scale, and 60 years later progress is slow.

There was a great cultural center, and you could see some of the works of the people native to the area, which was all a delight.

I didn’t realize how early Wall Drug closes so I got there too late to experience it, but I did get a beer across the street. The proprietor apologized that due to economic conditions the price of beer had gone up. I think it was from $2.25 to $2.50.