5th July - Deadwood to the Badlands, SD

Main street, Deadwood. 

We woke up before noon today (woo hoo!), feeling a little under the weather after our epic long weekend. Cory’s housemate came and picked us up and we collected the ‘fish’ car, then drove out to the Cabin. Cold brats for breakfast (Neil was right, they are delicious cold!), then it was time to say goodbye to our Deadwood/4^th July family. Vianne gave us a huge bag of brownies, which we were both extremely happy about – yumo! It was sad saying goodbye to everyone as we’d had such a fun and amazing weekend with them! One we’ll never forget J. Thanks Kuceras! 

Then we went back to the apartment, did the laundry, cleaned and packed up our stuff and the garbage. We watched cable TV and saw that Casey Anthony was found not guilty as we waited for the dryer to finish. Still an exciting story though – sentencing on Thursday for her ‘lying to investigators.’ 

Will, Neil and I outside the cabin. 

T-Rex at Wall Drug. 

Will took a couple of photos from the roof and then it was time to leave that dangerous world of Deadwood. We headed along the freeway past Rapid City on our way to the Badlands. It was quite a long, not-so-exciting drive. We stopped somewhere random to quickly dump rubbish at a Macca’s (handy for all kinds of uses!). Apart from that, we didn’t stop til we got to the little town of Wall. I was excited to see the amazing store Wall Drug as apparently it is full of tacky, touristy goodness. It did not disappoint! We had some late lunch (onion rings – best I’ve had in the US - and fries. I haven’t had that many onion rings here, but the ones we’ve had were all battery and yuk. These were awesome!) and also sampled their free iced water and Will had a 5c coffee. Nothing spectacular, just machine coffee, but still 5c!! Good way to get rid of some of those pesky pennies. After that we explored most of the place as it was quite big! A chippy, moosey, postcards and state magnets (up to date now!) – all joined our roadtrip!! Yay! We saw a few huge stuffed bison and even a roaring T-Rex, which scared this eight-year-old kid so much he ran down the corridor where it was and away from his parents. Hilarious. I don’t think I’ve seen a kid so scared! There were lots and lots of jackelopes and so many tacky, tacky delights!! Then after scamming some free internet from outside a motel (Days Inn and Best Western hehe), we continued on to find a campground in the Badlands. 

Jackelope! 

We ended up at the Sage Creek Campground. On our way we passed prairie dogs, pronghorn antelope, bison and Will even spotted a wild turkey lurkey-ing in a long grass. Unfortunately our photo only really shows its head and neck. Gobble gobble though as it was our first sighting! Awesome!

The dark speck in the middle of the back of the grass is a turkey head! 

The actual campground was a strange circular-ish area in the open with picnic tables and covers dotted around the centre and parking around it. Best part = free!! No fires or water though. It was so hot, so we had a restless night’s sleep, but as we were both tired from our epic weekend, we did manage to get a few hours of z’s. After tasty chicken burgers, delicious brownies and listening to the sounds of mosquitoes buzzing and hitting the screens on the windows…