Suck it in and Suck It Up

That’s our cue to hook up and get going: suck in the slides and haul up the jacks and away we go. We’re getting quite good at packing up in a hurry. After leaving Yellowstone, we headed east and happened upon the Little Bighorn Battlefield. This again proves Nui’s contention that we really should be looking at some of the brochures people keep handing us. The memorial came as quite a surprise – we thought it was further east. So we stopped and had a great tour and were impressed by how well marked the site is. For $8.00, the tour is well worth it. Prince finally got a chance to kick the grass to look for rattlesnakes but it was too hot for them to be out. Too bad we weren’t there the day before, since a lady told us she had seen a big one. From the Little Bighorn we crossed into Wyoming and stayed at a smallish town called Sheridan. There again we took a tour but it was a whole lot different. The driver careened around the town while playing a nearly inaudible tape which described scenes and locations that weren’t anywhere near where we were. The highlight was when he whacked his mirror on a road sign and had to stop. Too bad it wasn’t near a historic site. We slowed a little near the Sheridan Inn, which is the home of the Buffalo Bill museum. The reason we stopped here is that Prince’s son was graduating from Sheridan College in Ontario and we thought it was most appropriate to watch the convocation from Sheridan Wyoming. Prince’s eldest daughter graduated from St. Lawrence College today as well, but we didn’t see the town of Lawrence on the map until after we’d arrived in Deadwood, SD. Again, proving Nui’s point that we should be looking at brochures. Deadwood is really, really high!

Sorry we’re late with the reports. We not only couldn’t get Wifi, we can’t even get the GPS or cell phones to work. This is odd, since we are several thousand feet closer to the satellites than we normally are. So here we are in Deadwood, after a 4 hour trip up one mountain after another, culminating in Strawberry Ridge, which nearly brought the Beast to its knees. We are at roughly the same altitude as we were in the Rockies. Nui is convinced that there is no such thing as the ‘prairies’ and that it is just an urban legend meant to fool people into driving around endlessly in these )(*&)&* mountains. Does this country never flatten out?! Prince is finding that his oxygen levels go down the higher up we go. For this reason, he has decided to abandon his trip to climb Mt. Everest. Deadwood is a great little town and we took a local Texan’s advice and went to the Mineral Palace restaurant and casino in the heart of the town (actually, the old red light district). Another interesting spot. We ordered a really nice steak to share, since we were told that the portions were quite large. Fortunately, there was an elevator to take us downstairs, since neither one of us was capable of walking after that huge meal. The town has over 60 casinos and all the gas stations have been re-purposed into some neat little shops, such as the Chubby Chipmunk chocolate shop. We may go visit that tomorrow before we suck it up and suck it in and head for Mount Rushmore.