Wednesday 16 August 2017

Day Twenty Two

We met for breakfast at 9am. Dad complained that all the food had gone and that the scrambled egg tasted of mashed potato. There was a child with green hair. Not sure why.

We reconvened at about 10.10am to catch the trolley into town. There are two trolleys that do loops and you pay a dollar to get on board. We took it down to the historic main street in Deadwood.

Got off the trolley and walked the length of it. It doesn't look historic. It is full of casinos and bars and shops selling tat. Ann tried to convince me that if you looked beyond the tat and at the buildings you can see the old city. Don't buy it.

Tat City
We wandered over to the Adams museum. It had stuff from olden times - 150 years ago. There was history of the town, etc. There was a stuffed calf with two heads. Also saw these bad boys.

Mountain Lion

Golden Eagle
We went and had a drink and then caught the trolley up to here http://www.brokenbootgoldmine.com/

We paid a smallish fee and put on a hard hat. Then we went into the former gold mine. In actual fact it didn't provide that much gold and was mined mainly for fool's gold. We followed the guide and tried not to smack our head. The guide lit a candle at one point and turned out the light to show us what it was really like to work by candle light. It was quite dark. It should have been darker except Ann had her phone on. The miners used to work in pairs with one candle. One held the chisel, one hit it with a hammer. It was so dark the hitter couldn't see the chisel head, so the holder put his thumb over the end so the nail reflected the candle light. He then counted to three and moved his thumb!

Shaft

Rocks
After the tour was over we caught the trolley back to the hotel and ate the remains of last night's pizza for lunch. Then we got the car and drove back towards the town but turned off the main drag to visit the Mount Moriah Cemetery. Deadwood is in a gorge and the cemetery is above the town on one of the sides.  We looked around. It had graves. These are the most famous ones there.

Wild Bill Hickok

Calamity Jane
You also get to overlook the town from one vantage point. We did.

Downtown
We then drove back down to the town and killed some time. Then at 6pm it was time for the Deadwood gun show. After Cody's offering we were hoping for something better. It was. There was an actual script. The downside was that script wasn't very long. In fact, the actual show part lasted about two minutes.


The gunshots were very loud and Ann ended up deaf as a post.

When it was over we walked across to Harry's Spaghetti Western Restaurant for dinner. It was very good. You had to choose your pasta type, your sauce and the meat type. Ann had broccoli. Not really a meat type. Afterwards we got ice cream. It was some weird Neapolitan flavour. We watched 'How the West Was Won' whilst we ate.

We then headed back to the hotel, put some warmer clothes on and reconvened at 8pm for another mini golf tournament. The course is actually at our hotel so it was a short walk. It was a good course, very well maintained and led for some exciting golf. It meant Ann got her golfing mojo back.


It also meant dad did this.


Twice.


Despite his double double (Two holes in one in the two rounds we have played since he has been here) he also threw in some fairly average shots as well.


This meant he and Ann battled out for second place. It was a contest that went right down to the last hole. This final hole included the chance to get minus scores. The last shot had a lot riding on it.


The final scores were:

Knightley RJ - 39
Roffe - 49
Knightley WR - 49

We then retired to the nineteenth hole for free drinks using a token we got on check in before retiring for the evening.

States visited - 8