Day 27: Greybull, WY, to Deadwood, SD

On this day, we left Greybull, WY, and headed east for Deadwood, SD. We had some more wildlife jams on our route that were almost as stunning as those in Yellowstone.

Our first stop was at a sheep farm we passed.


There were so many sheep that we just had to stop. We pulled in and turned the car off to see what we could hear.



There was so much bleating; I couldn’t believe it.



It was shortly followed by our first natural moose sighting. One little guy just ran out onto the highway from the woods. He stopped in the middle of the road, looked at us, and then kept on moving. Weird.


Shortly after that, we saw a HUGE bull moose and his lady out in a little creek valley by the side of the highway. A few cars of folks had pulled over to the side to watch them. They were really quite beautiful!



We stopped for lunch at a place called Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. It was way off the beaten path, and signs for it indicated that it had picnic areas. So we pulled off and found it down a gravel road. When we reached the Fort, we saw signs saying that there was a $2 admission price. We decided to ignore that and eat at the picnic tables anyhow.

The picnic tables were placed away from the Fort’s visitor center closer to the horse paddock. There was one horse there that had a weird blindfold on. His little fenced-off pen was fairly small compared to the huge pasture surrounding it. The weather was warm and clear with a slight breeze that apparently blew through the horse shit and right toward our picnic table. Nice.

Here was our next wildlife jam. This little guy came just steps from our table, ate some clover, and then scampered away.


After lunch, Dave went to use the bathroom which was housed in a small building near the horse paddock. When he returned, he had a weird look on his face. I asked what was going on, and he responded that I needed to check out those bathrooms before we left. I asked why and if it was a latrine. He said, “No, it’s a contemporary response to the latrine.” This sounded frightening to me.

A few minutes later, four cowboys showed up to let the blindfolded horse out of the paddock into the pasture with the other horses. Well, three of the cowboys headed out to the pasture, but one young gent headed to the bathroom. I happened to be going into the ladies’ room while this young man was going into the men’s room. The entire time I was in the ladies’ room, this young man made barfing noises in the men’s room. I think I understand why. When I walked into the women’s room, I discovered that there was (drum roll please) NO PLUMBING. This was a composting bathroom. The toilet was a set with a big brown hole in the middle. Not the black pit of a latrine, just a brown hole. I have no idea where that hole led, and I was ok with that. When I was finished, there was a sanitizing lotion dispenser for the hand washing. Ugh. It’s a good thing that I only had to pee. No, I took NO pictures of this.

We quickly packed up our picnic and got back on the road. This Fort Phil Kearny was too strange. I needed to get out of here.

At about 5:30 pm, we reached Deadwood, SD.


Like the rest of the tourists, we only knew about Deadwood from the HBO show of the same name. We arrived just in time for the 6 pm display of a street shootout, called Deadwood Gunslingers, in the middle of Main Street.


They block off the streets with this sign:


The sheriff shows up with his boys...


...and shoots at some lawbreakers. The whole thing takes about 15 minutes.


After the shootout, we wandered the streets of downtown Deadwood, which are designed to look like they did in the late 1800s when Deadwood was a thriving gold mining camp/town. Our choices were souvenir shops, hotels, casinos, bars, and restaurants. That’s all we could find.



For those who don’t know, Deadwood is where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and where Calamity Jane died. This place is the original location of the Saloon #10, where Wild Bill was shot during a card game by Jack McCall.


We decided that we would hit a little show at 8 pm that showed the trial of Jack McCall, but before that, we needed to find a place to stay. I was lobbying for a hotel since I was tired of being in the car and camping so far from bathrooms. In our search for a hotel, we saw these buckets outside an inn.


SD was jumping with bikers, especially in Deadwood. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a reasonably priced room in town, so we made reservations at the damn KOA again.

At 8, we headed to the Deadwood Masonic Hall.


There we saw the trial of Jack McCall as performed by the Deadwood Alive Players.


The performance was pretty cute. It began with some old-timey music as performed by the judge, the prosecutor, and the court reporter.


During his trial, McCall, guarded by a young sheriff’s deputy, was tried and acquitted due to his well-woven lies.


True story, except the deputy bit. He then fled to Wyoming where he bragged about Hickok’s murder and was retried because the WY authorities did not accept the verdict of the SD trial, SD being Injun Territ’ry and all. WY authorities found McCall guilty and he was “hanged until dead.”

After the performance, we went to the Gem Steakhouse and Saloon (Al Swearengen’s place) for dinner. It was ok, not great. We were told by a gentleman at a casino that this place was the best steakhouse in town. It was reasonably priced, but nothing to write home about. Thus, no photos.


This sign was posted in the ladies’ room of the Gem lobby.


We then headed to the KOA, which we thought we had identified earlier. When we arrived, we were very impressed by the facilities. The office was a huge, huge store with a café and a gift shop and a reservation desk resembling the front desk at the Trump Hotel in Vegas. It had a great pool, putt-putt golf, beautiful grounds, the whole thing. We were, of course, at the wrong KOA. We figured out that we were about 15 minutes from the one where we had reservations. I was so bummed. So we headed to our standard, non-deluxe, plain old KOA and ended another day.