Lead, SD to Deadwood, SD - Tuesday, August 31, 2010

In the morning we ate breakfast in the campground's restaurant decorated with pictures of motorcycles, campers and advertisements. Picked up a newspaper about this year's recent Sturgis motorcycle rally. At this year's rally, Pee Wee Herman was auditioning for extras in his new movie on his bike adventure.

After breakfast we drove into the Lead to the Black Hills Mining Museum. The museum covers gold mining and the economic development cultural/social history of Lead. Kathy found a telephone operator's panel.

The museum was in an old Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store. Some ex-miners had converted the basement into a simulated mine. A young man guided us on an interesting tour explaining the history of the Homestake Mine and the process of gold mining mixed with jokes, e.g., alcohol is not allowed in the mine because everyone is a minor.

The Homestake Mine is the deepest mine and the second largest producer of gold in North America . It goes down 8,000 feet below the surface. The mine closed in May 2001. (Google pictures)

Now the mine is being converted to look for neutrinos and dark matter particles. The new lab is called the Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake. At this time they are draining the mine of water. By May 2009, the water was drained down to 4,850 feet.

The 4,850 foot level was the central clearing level when the mine was in operation. This level contained the mine's most extensive and sophisticated railway and communications system and many major workshops. Each day, miners went to this level first before proceeding to the level where they would work for the day. The Sanford Underground laboratory is going to put their first detectors at this level.

After the tour, Kathy and I went to look at the big mining hole in the middle of Lead. Homestake started as a surface mine. The surface mine continued off and on until 1998. The hole is 1,200 feet deep and a half-mile across. It is big.

One the way our of Lead, we stopped for lunch at the Pizza Lab. Kathy and I had three kinds of pizza: ranch vegetarian, pesto tomato, and a thai chicken pizza. We agreed that the thai chicken was the best. Though the place is a really good pizza place, Chris was disappointed that they had not emphasized the "lab" theme. You can see the kitchen from the front. They could have had bubbling beakers and tesla coils sparking between the kitchen and front. (Video of a tesla coil playing 2001: Space Odyssey) The servers could dress in lab coats and laugh maniacally, i.e., like a mad scientist, when they served your pizza.

We drove the short distance to Deadwood. After finding our campground, Kathy and Chris took the trolley in to see a murder of Hickok in the #10 Saloon (video) and the Trial of Jack McCall. (video) The shows Kathy and I saw were more relaxed than the ones recorded in the videos linked to.

Fifteen minutes before the trial began, the main actors in the trial including Jack McCall played music. The music was humorous. My favorite was "Ghost Chickens in the Sky" to the tune of "Ghost Riders in the Sky." The audience helped by making chicken noises after each line and in the chorus of "Bwaak Bwaaa Bwaaa" instead of "yeppie yi yo, yeppie yi yeaa." (video by Sean Morey, the writer of the song) (Other Sean Morey songs)

Spearfish, SD to Lead, SD - Monday, August 30, 2010

Spearfish's city campground is beside the DC Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery. The first thing we did this morning was tour this historic site.

When the whites stole these hills from the Indians for the gold, the whites also discovered the streams are a perfect environment for trout. Trout are not native to the Black Hills because the fish can't get here on their own. So the federal government sent D. C. Booth to establish a program for seeding the streams with trout. Over the next 30 years, Booth built a hatchery that provided over a million tiny trout a year to streams in the Black Hills, around the country and even Europe. In the picture, Kathy stands in front of a bronze statute about restocking a stream.

One of the most interesting exhibits on hatchery grounds were the fish railroad cars. The government had 10 railroad cars specially designed and built to transport tiny trout across the country. The car had a dozen of wooden fish tanks, plus facilities for the room and board of a crew of five people. These railroad cars were discontinued in 1947 with the building of more hatcheries across the country, more and better roads, and the development of better trucks for transporting stock fish.

The historic hatchery still stocks some trout even today. Though they now release fewer numbers, the fish are larger, the size is called "catchable." We fed the fish.

Our next stop in Spearfish was the workshop art gallery of Dick Termes. Termes creates six-point perspective spherical art called Termespheres. Since visiting his workshop, we have seen a number of them hanging around the Black Hills. (Google images of Termespheres)

We left Spearfish through Spearfish Canyon. We saw Roughlock Falls
and one place where they filmed the Black Hills scenes of Dances with Wolves.

Roughlock Falls has changed a lot since Kathy first saw it as a child; it's even changed a lot since she began taking her own children to see it! Where once we climbed down the bank to the stream and then walked in the water to go under the Falls, you now can not even go down to the stream! There are now fences and viewing platforms around the Falls. The banks near the falls are now pretty much straight up and down and there is a lot more vegetation everywhere.

It's still a beautiful little falls; quite photogenic. But part of the magic is gone now. It was always fun to walk in the freezing cold water (in our tennis shoes) and struggle up the rocks to find shelter in a "cave" under the Falls. I hope our grandchildren will still get to see Roughlock Falls, but I regret they won't get the same fun experiences three other generations of the family had!

Near Cheyenne Crossing, we found the road and Hanna campground Kathy remembered from her childhood visits to this area. She also camped here with her children.

We camped five miles from Lead.