Making HBO Real

After a night at one of the worst “hotels,” in fact it was less of a hotel and more of a motel in a town with only two “restaurants,” we were ready to begin the next part of our journey.

This started with a trip to the Badlands. Jeanne led the way egging us on to explore further and further into uncharted parts of this land. When she had her fill of exploration and adventure we went back to the car to attack yet another hill. After climbing up several hundred feet in only a couple of miles, we dared to reach the hill’s apex.

We then left behind the Badlands for the great town of Wall. Now let me give some background about the importance of this stop. For the past several hundred miles of the most boring driving country (yes Minnesota I’m looking at you) the only thing that kept us going was the promise of “Walls Drug Store’s” approach.

Well, Wall’s Drug Store was not quite the oasis we expected it to be. But they did in fact have $.05 coffee (take that Starbucks). And the meal we had was pretty decent including something called a Turtle Cake. [On a side note, I do not think that “Gold Digger” means the same thing out here as it does on the east coast.]

Following that we left for Mt. Rushmore. Pretty neat and did make me feel patriotic.

We now are in the town of Deadwood (that’s right just like the TV show)! In fact we are staying at the “Bullock Hotel and Casino” which is home to his ghost. Included in the price of our stay is the opportunity to “toast” Mr. Bullock (well this really is just a buy one get one free for drinks, but hey, he’s not here to drink it).

On the drive over here Jeanne had requested Italian. While it would be a dramatic change from the usual steak and hamburger (that’s right, we are complaining that all we eat is steak, we lead a really hard life), we did not believe that a small town in the Black Hills could provide such amenities. Fortunately we were wrong, and treated ourselves to a great meal that did not involve too much steak (although we had to try the “steak and rice soup”).