Day # 24- Killed in a Bar When He Was Only Three

Only my Madre will understand today's song lyric title.  If she remembers, that is.  When I was very little, I had a record player.  I played one record over and over-Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.  One line of the song says, "Killed in a bar, when he was only three".  Everytime I played the song, I was confused.  First, why was a 3 year old in a bar?  Second, how could he have done all of these brave things if he was killed at 3?  Well, it turns out, those were not the words.  The song actually says, "Killed him a bear when he was only three".  Makes much better sense.  My lingering question is how did I even know what a bar was when I was young enough to be concerned with Davy Crockett being killed in one?

Now that I have rambled, I will connect that memory with today.  The main destination for this entire trip was Deadwood, SD.  We finally made it there today.

There was only a 15 min time difference between driving through the Black Hills and taking the highway, so of course we wanted the scenic drive.  We stopped at a trail and did some hiking.  The trails were marked by level of difficulty.  As we had not planned to hike today, we thought it best to stay on the beginner trail.  We saw signs to watch out for rattlesnakes and poison ivy.  Surprisingly, we encountered neither.  This is shocking since we tend to do everything the hard way.

The drive through the hills to Deadwood was beautiful.  We saw signs telling us to lookout for big horn sheep.  We didn't see any.

We love the TV show of Deadwood and could talk for hours about the history of the town.  With Tombstone as our only reference for what an old Western town should look like, we were pretty disappointed to see mostly modern buildings.  The entirety of the town burned to the ground on two occasions, but I would have thought the buildings would have still been built to look like it did in the late 1800's.

That said, the visit was not a total fail
 We were able to go to the Saloon #10 where Wild Bill Hickcock was shot.  We sat at the bar and had a beer only served in that bar from an 1800s recipe.  It tasted what I imagine moonshine tasted like.  Below the current bar was the original bar.  We took a tour from a very knowledgeable guide and were able to sit in the very spot where Wild Bill was shot from behind.  The"dead man's hand" of cards lay on the table.  The tour also showed a tiny room where one of the 'ladies of the night' would have worked and stayed.  The guide told us to notice signs as we walked through town.  If a shop name had a color in it, then it used to be a brothel.  Apparently they were known by their colored doors.  We saw a shop called The Purple Place (or something like that) and knew it was once a brothel.  We also learned that brothels still existed in Deadwood until the 1980s!!

We bought our first souvenir today for someone other than baby Abigail.  We got something for her, of course, but we also got something for Mom.  She asked for a dream catcher.  She wanted an authentic one, not a made in China catcher.  We scoured the shops and finally found one.

There was just so much to see and so much walking that we were pooped.  Tomorrow we plan to go to Mt. Rushmore and then back to Deadwood to the cemetery and a paranormal tour at the Bullock hotel.  So, as usual, stay tuned!