 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Romantic Getaways |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Deadwood’s Top of the Ten
Another Superbowl on the books, another party finished. For the second year in a row, my wife and I headed over to a friend's house just down the street, where there were a lot of Manning fans. Needless to say, there was a lot of noise when New York won in the final minutes of the game. We had to come home and sit in silence for a few minutes to let our ears readjust. A small price to witness one of the more exciting football games in recent memory. Of course, even with all the postgame, you've still got an hour or two before bedtime. So I decided to boot up the computer and go through my digital camera photos that I've failed to organize for a while. I found a few gems I'd forgotten about - like some very incriminating photos of my brother - but I also discovered some shots of a recent night out in Deadwood.
Fat Tuesday on Friday in Deadwood
The brick streets and Western architecture of Deadwood might be 1,500 miles from the French Quarter in New Orleans, but the Black Hills will bring a bit of Bourbon Street to South Dakota this weekend with Mardi Gras. Deadwood's Mardi Gras, of course, is a bit smaller, which makes things like parking, walking and getting a table at restaurants a sane activity. Expect some crowds and plenty of things to do - after all, Fat Tuesday is one of the most popular winter events in Deadwood - but you won't have a problem jostling for the red beans and rice come dinner time.
The Best Cup of Cocoa? Take 1
As the chilly winter months continue, I've decided it would be fun to see if I can find out where in the Hills you can get the best cup of hot cocoa. My tastes may be discriminating, because I must say, I make a really mean cup of cocoa myself. The first location on my list is Bully Blends, a coffee and tea house in downtown Rapid City. Let me start off by saying that the place gets very high points for atmosphere, which seems rather unlikely when you realize it is located in the old Aby's Feed & Seed store in one of the more historic blocks of downtown.
New Martinis in the Old Town
Don’t get me wrong – all those things are really excellent reasons to visit The Ten (per local lingo). It is everything you’d expect from a place called “saloon.” I’m not even kidding about sawdust on the floor. Doesn’t get much more authentic than that. But if you’re looking for something a bit more date-worthy, I’d like to recommend...
Tunnel Vision at Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore is the hands-down favorite place to visit in the Black Hills, but Iron Mountain Road has to rank a close second. For starters, it starts just a couple miles from the mountain sculpture, so it's hard to miss it. Secondly, it connects Rushmore with another very striking piece of the Black Hills - Custer State Park. Third, it does so through some of the most distinctively Black Hills landscape you'll ever see. Part of that landscape includes the tunnels. They were designed more for aesthetics than for function. Sure, it would have easy enough to plot another route - but really, why do that when high explosives are an option? Of course, there's a little more involved in the Iron Mountain Road tunnels than the explosions that carved them (although you have to imagine that for the former miners who built them, the chance to play with boom-boom sticks again had to have been a big plus).
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
||
 |
|
 Most Popular
 Related Links
|
Previous Entries
