July 4th - Deadwood III

Happy Independence Day USA!!!

We had another epic sleep-in (I was conscious again at about 3pm!). Then we spent some quality American time watching cable TV and eating burgers from Mustang Sally’s. A good celebration of the day methinks! Will did also catch a glimpse of the parade that went down the street.

Then it was time to start the real celebrating. Neil took us to Taco John’s for dinner (our first time at this place – apparently it is only really in the South Dakotan area) and he even gave us a cultural experience - a crazy looking Apple Grande. Basically it’s a sweet pizza type thing with chunks of apple on it, then ground up pink candy sugary stuff which makes it sweet and then…it is covered with cheese!! Will and I were a little perplexed by the idea, but bravely agreed to try it. It was definitely an interesting flavour, but certainly not unpleasant!

Aerial view of Deadwood from Jack's plane.
Picture stolen from Neil's Facebook hehe. 

We went to Lead and hung out at Neil’s cousin, Cory’s, place with him and his friends. We watched fireworks, got rained on and even saw a car with fireworks underneath it. Well, just spitting and letting off sparks, but still. At home you need a permit for fireworks, so it was kind of fun to know people were just randomly letting off fireworks wherever and whenever they pleased. I just wished I could see them all! The actual fireworks were ok, but didn’t last for long. Apparently the Mt Rushmore celebrations didn’t happen because they didn’t want to set off fireworks so close to lots of dry, dead trees. So you’d think they’d make Lead’s better to make up for it, but no! Some of the fireworks were pretty low, so I think there might have been some slightly singed people who were sitting to close to where they were setting them off! A few years ago apparently a whole heap went off accidentally and flew into the group – some scorched peeps, I reckon. Glad we weren’t too close! Then afterwards we went back inside, played with the two huge (but funny) dogs. Will had his All-American 40 ounce Bud Light. The boys told a story about an Edward bottle hands challenge. You tape one 40-ounce (1.18 litres) to each of your hands (2 bottles total) and then you can’t take them off until they are empty. Better drink fast, or else you could have some problems going to the bathroom! 

Then we headed for town. Back to… surprise, surprise… Saloon number 10! We caught up with Jack and Vianne. Vianne insisted on buying us t-shirts from the Saloon – we are now the proud owners of t-shirts from Deadwood, South Dakota! So awesome! Thanks guys! And then we proceeded to drink away the third 4 am night in a row! These Kucera people are killing us haha. So so fun!

We ended up back at the apartment, after picking up pizzas from up the road. We talked to the lady behind the bar at the pub where we got pizzas, who recognised us as Aussies. We’d just been commenting on a news story from home – can’t remember what it was exactly, but it was random! Back at the apartment, beers were drunk on the roof and pizza was demolished. Will and I went to bed a tad earlier than the previous nights (3am!) as we knew we’d be back on the road tomorrow. What a great real American 4^th of July!