Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Honeymoon - Day 5

Day 5 – Saturday, December 1, 2007

Oh, it was so nice to sleep in and I love Robert for letting me. I finally rolled out of bed about 9:30am; a lot later than I wanted, but the extra sleep was wonderful. The cold and constant traveling is starting to wear me out. When I finally awoke, I woke to snow. Go figure. And it’s only going to get worse. The wonderful newscaster says a storm front is moving across South Dakota. Robert mentioned he wants to make it as far as Chicago, but driving on the icy roads scare me and I want to go home. Plus, I’m missing the cats!

My spirits lifted once we were on the road. Going to Deadwood today! Another must see, at least for me. I am a HUGE Kevin Costner fan and he owns a casino there. It continued snowing and snowing and snowing as we drove through Sturgis to Deadwood. It did warm up a bit, though, hitting a high of 20-degrees in Deadwood. We bundled up in our winter clothes and walked the streets absorbing the history. We took pictures of the saloon where Wild Bill Hitchcock was shot and then there it was… The Midnight Star. Walking inside was like walking into a Kevin Costner shrine. Literally. Movie posters, pictures, and his outfits from just about every one of his movies hung on the wall. FYI my favorite Costner movie is A Perfect World followed closely by his latest, Mr. Brooks. Oh, I was in Heaven.

Finally, Robert ushered me gently to the door or else I would still there camping out in the lobby. We ate lunch at the Mineral Palace – another historic building. Robert had a buffalo burger and I had a French Dip with sliced buffalo. If you’ve never eaten buffalo, then you’re missing out. It is so much tastier than hamburger. Oh, did I mention it was still snowing?

After Deadwood we headed east on I-90 to Wall Drug Store. I’ve heard about Wall Drug Store from Robert’s mom, Lois, so I was very interested in seeing it. We got there just before closing and bought a few souvenirs. We also got our picture taken in one of those silly booths and took pictures of the deer heads on the wall.
We continued east on Highway 14 towards Pierre. The roads were pretty icy and I was scared. At one point I closed my eyes in an unsuccessful attempt at sleep. When I opened them there were several deer standing in the roadway. All I could do was gasp. Robert hit the brakes, but not hard enough to send us into a tailspin, and honked the horn. Just when I thought we were going to hit the last one running across the road it leaped out of the way only moments before impact. Damn deer! Almost gave me a heart attack!

Of course I couldn’t sleep after that. With each bounce of the tire I expected disaster. About 8pm we rolled into Pierre, the state capitol of South Dakota. We passed into another time-zone as we crossed over the Missouri River, which put the time at 9pm. We only traveled 322 miles, but it was a good, if not exhausting, day.

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