June 21,2008

Well sorry didn't write last night, Friday, as it my beatin night. I got a good beatin too!!!! So bad I couldn't lift my arms to type. I was sent to do laundry and back for a good Friday night beatin. ............ Truth: I was real tired and we did do laundry.

Yesterday the 20Th we left Hill Town and went to Deadwood. Deadwood is still in the Black Hills but it famous for preserving it buildings from the late 1800's. It was a very notorious town in it's day. A big gold mining town. Guess a lot of gold in those there hills. Very lawless for a time from what I understand. Burned down 3 times but was rebuilt. Seems the bank burned down but the gold in it didn't. Very interesting town. In this town Wild Bill Hickok was slain in the #9 saloon. He was only 39 years old. Calamity Jane also live in this town and she died the day after Wild Bill. She was in love with him but don't think it was mutual. She is buried right beside him. From Deadwood it was only a while when we hit Wyoming. Wow what a first impression it made. Rolling hills green, just beautiful but we were still in the Black Hills. A few miles into Wyoming we stop at what is called a "vore". A vore is a sink hole!!!!! The Indians use this sink hole to send the Buffalo in. Yep corralled them to their death. They would send about 300 at a time to this hole. And, they would use every part of the buffalo. All the meat was taken out of the hole by the children, put on sleds and taken to where ever they lived, which, was not near there. They would use the hide, some was stiff and use for armour some was soft and this hide was rub with the brain and a chemical in the brain would soften the hide to like a suede. Amazing. Use the fur,use it all except some of the bones which was left in the hole. There was 20 feet of bone in this particular hole. Oh yes and this is the "pre-historic" indian, they did not have horses!

Not far from there we stopped at Devils Tower. Our camp site was at the foot of this thing. This tower is made of lava, lime stone and other sediments. It is constantly eroding.

Ok now we are today the 21st. We got up, had a very good night of sleep. Went up to the Tower, it's a national monument, to see it up close. We ended up waking around the circumference of the base. Saw some nutty climbers on one side of the face. (Look like fun Judge?)

We started driving and driving. We saw white capped mountains. We went over what was called Big Horn Mountains. They were beautiful. Snow capped. Not bad going up but coming down kinda scary. But Mike did a great job. We saw beautiful wildflowers, snow, great temperatures. It was beautiful. But let me tell you what is in-between Devils Tower and the mountains. Many many many horned antelope. There are more antelope in Wyoming than there are people. You can't go more than 10 miles without seeing one or many. But also there are miles of kind of no so pretty fields with an oil well here and there. Many more than I expected. But I didn't expect any. Not such a nice part of WY. Got over the mountains and there is a large space to the Rockies. Like a plain. Lots of farms, lots of live stock. Drove some more and got here to where we are now......Cody. Went out to dinner in Cody. Home of Wild Bill Cody. He built a hotel here which is where we had dinner. Had ribs that fell of the bone and were still as moist as a rare steak. Yum. Town of Cody is pretty big and was quite busy. Has a rodeo every night. Think we might give it try tomorrow night. We are about 50 miles from Yellowstone so we are here for about 3 days. Goobie will be happy.

Some of my readers have been curious about our gas mileage. We are averaging about 10.5 miles per gallon. And the gas prices since South Dakota have been under $4.00 per gallon. Talk to to all tomorrow.