Vacation Day 3

Friday, July 2, 2010: We woke up this morning and again had breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast room is on the same floor as our room. We then headed out and went to the Broken Boot Gold Mine, which is right outside Deadwood. We took a tour of the mine and then the girls panned for gold and actually got a few little pieces each (according to the tour guide, each of them got about $3 worth of gold). We drove through Lead and stopped at a bar called Lewie’s to pick up a T-shirt for someone back home. Then we took a scenic bypass road on our way to Devil’s Tower. The bypass took us past 3 waterfalls. The first one was about a mile walk off of the road. The second maybe a half-mile walk and the 3rd was right along the road. We ate lunch at a restaurant in Spearfish that looked like a lodge. I cannot remember the name of the restaurant but it was good. It took about another hour to get to Devil’s Tower from there. We did stop at the Wyoming welcome sign and took a picture of the girls there. This is another new state for both of them. We started to see Devil’s Tower from a distance but it still took a little while to drive there! Once there, we walked up a path and took some pictures as well as going into the park service building and reading about the monument. This was the first national monument in the US. We stopped at the Devil’s Tower Outpost on the way out of the park and bought some souvenirs and ice cream. We then drove back to Deadwood and arrived here maybe around 6:00pm. We parked the car at the other end of Main Street (where we had not really looked around much yet) and went into some shops. We also gambled in a couple casinos. Kids are allowed to be in the casinos here. They just cannot touch the machines. So Bruce and I played “Deal or no Deal” slots for awhile and let the girls stand behind us and watch. It was fun! Finally, around 8:00, we went to one of the casino’s buffets for dinner, which tonight included prime rib and crab legs. It wasn’t like a buffet in Vegas or even the St. Louis casinos though……not much selection at all and everything shoved into one little space. Oh well. I them gambled some more while Bruce and the girls came back to the hotel and swam. When I got back to the hotel, they got out of the pool. Bruce changed clothes and went out to the casinos for a while (he is actually still there) while the girls and I finished our card game from last night. We are now going to bed.