Mt. Rushmore to Casper, WY

This morning we woke up relatively early and headed off North to the town of Deadwood. Ellen chose this town from the list of places that we wanted to see around Mt. Rushmore and it sounded great to all of us. It's a good hour or more from Mt. Rushmore, but since we were staying in Rapid City it was only about a 40 minute drive.

The city is a really charming old town that has been restored very well. Once you arrive, you quickly love the look of it and just want to walk around and look at all of the buildings and the stores that have since taken them over from saloons and banks. Since we did not eat any breakfast at the hotel, we chose the Buffalo SteakHouse Saloon which served up big breakfasts for all of us.

Now that we were all fueled up, we wandered from store to store. There are quite a few casinos here, most of which had some kind of theme or had restored the original buildings so well. It almost felt as if you were walking around in the late 1800's or early 1900's. Very fun!

Looking down the street you can see the old architecture of the buildings, and as you approach each one it displays it's original purpose and when it was built. Granted most are now taken by small shops selling touristy stuff or by restaurants, but it still retains it's charm.

At the end of the block (and over one street), there is a great museum. The Adams Museum has so much stuff from the time when this town was a thriving mining town. Ellen spent so much time in there after Ethan and I already finished the three floors. She was reading everything! She really loves those "Wanted" posters, as they were originals from the 1800's.

The rest of the town is filled with all kinds of funny signs (many of which are real of course). You cannot help but love to wander around and look at everything.

After wandering around for hours, we headed up to the Broken Boot Gold Mine which is only about 5 minutes outside of town. This gold mine was a real gold mine that has long since been closed. They now give tours of it and provide you with some information on the reality of gold mining. The tour is only about 30 minutes which is a great length for us! The only downside was that the mine smells of sulfur, but that only seemed to bother Ethan.

As you can see from the entrance, you actually walk into the original opening of the mine. Granted they fixed it up to look better, but you really are walking in where they entered to do their mining.

Inside the mine it's quite dark and about 68 degrees. It's refreshing in there in the summertime! You were allowed to take any of the rocks you found inside the cave, but it did not seem like there were any leftover hunks of gold to be found!

After the tour, the kids opted to "pan for gold." They provide you with pans and a bag full of rocks and dirt and teach you the technique to separate the gold from the rock. I think Ethan had better skills since he ended up with about twice as much gold flake as Ellen. Maybe mining is in his future?

By this time it was already mid-afternoon and we wanted to head down to Casper, Wyoming to stay for the night. There's really not much to see on the way, but we had to stop for a very late lunch and we decided on a small restaurant in Gillette, Wyoming. Granny's Kitchen was the lucky restaurant for us, and Granny served up some good soup and chili for me. I don't think we met Granny as our waitress seemed a bit young.

According to our travel book Gillette is the second wealthiest city in Wyoming. This surprised us since the town is tiny and not that nice. It consists of a few blocks of shops, and some industrial areas. We asked Granny (well our waitress at the restaurant) why it was so wealthy. Apparently they have tons of coal and oil! Maybe this really was Granny! Jed and Jethro are somewhere in the back cooking the food :-)

After moving on, we drove for a few hours and saw absolutely nothing other than farmland. Not even tiny houses along the way all the way down to Casper. It's amazing just how much of Wyoming is nothing but farmland that farms hay. Those cows really eat a lot of hay!

After arriving in Casper we checked in and headed downtown to have some dinner at a recommended Italian restaurant. All of us enjoyed our dinners at Botticelli's and would highly recommend it to others.

We wrapped up the night with some rummy and relaxed with t.v. Tomorrow we are headed to Denver via Cheyenne. It's a long drive, but I'm looking forward to seeing Reagan and Gary along with their families. From memory it's been about 14 years since I saw any of them. Wow, how time flies. I'm really getting old!

Hotel: Garden Inn, Casper - Excellent as usual. Feels like home. Seems brand new! Highly recommended.