Don't Mess with Bill

Don’t Mess with Bill was a single gold record hit song by the Marvelettes in 1966.  It was also darn good advice in Abilene in the mid 1800s when Wild Bill Hickock was the Marshal.  Bill killed 36 men in gunfights.  He was a crack shot and the first person that actually fought a ‘quick draw’ duel.  Bill was a little too quick: while breaking up an unruly mob, his deputy (and close friend) came running up behind him to lend a hand.  Bill, thinking one of the mob was going to jump him from behind, whirled and accidentally shot him dead.  The incident haunted Bill for the rest of his life and led to his being fired from his Marshal's job 2 months later.

This bronze likeness of Bill stands over his Boot Hill grave.

Naturally, Bill made a few enemies along the way, one of which wanted to hire John Wesley Hardin to kill him.  John, following the Marvelette’s advice, declined, with the comment, ‘If Bill needs killing why don’t you kill him yourself?’

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Hickock was an army scout for Sherman and Custer in his early years.  He tried stage acting briefly but was lousy.  In his later years, he became a professional gambler and that’s what brought him to Deadwood in the gold rush days.  Jack McCall shot Bill in the back of the head while he was playing poker, holding the now-famous ‘dead man’s hand’ of aces and eights.  It’s not clear why Jack did the dastardly deed.  He claimed Bill killed his brother but that was a lie: he didn't have a brother.  McCall was hanged for the killing, thereby achieving the dubious honor of being the the last person to ignore the advice, ‘Don’t mess with Bill.’

An expanded view of Boot Hill, which is indeed a hill.

Deadwood was twice destroyed by fire and once by flood.  But it's still there, full of hotels, casinos, saloons, Harleys and tourists - but no brothels: US marshals closed down the last one in 1980.  We did the city tour yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Local actors perform a reenactment of the capture and trial of McCall

 during the tourist season.

I gotta say this to Jack’s ghost, on behalf of Bill’s ghost, “Okay, so you just had to kill me.  Why, I don’t know.  But, couldn’t you have waited until I had a losing hand?  I had 2 pair, aces over, probably the winning hand, and you, you sumbitch, shoot me!  That’s what makes your crime so heinous and that’s why I’m gonna haunt you forever, you cowardly back-shooting little prick!”

Crazy Horse

We’re camped 25 miles south of Deadwood for 3 nights.  Elevation is 5060’, so nights are chilly, down to 39 degrees the first night.  Sturgis is nearby and the annual Harley rally is next week so there’s a constant stream of bikers going by, heading to and from Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument, which we toured today. 

Scale model on left, real thing on right.

The face is done, current work is on the hand and horse head, outlined in white on the mountain.

When/if completed, the monument will be many times larger than Mt Rushmore: the head alone is larger than the 4 Mt Rushmore figures.  It was started in 1948.  Based on progress so far, I expect it will take another 150 years to complete.  Funding is all private, from donations and the $10/person entry fee.  The fee gives you access to the large museum, sculptor's home and workshop, and an excellent introductory film.

The most eye-catching item in the Museum.

The annual Days of 76 Parade was held in Deadwood the same day we visited Mr Horse.

This drum and fife corps group, complete with little drummer boy, was probably in the parade before performing at the Monument.  A light rain was falling so the audience is small.

 

Wilder

The Wilder family lived in this house.

Above and below, the school attended by the Wilder kids.

Artie and Ranger are waiting to welcome the students.

Heading southeast from Watertown, we had to detour through DeSmet, SD, The Little Town on the Prairie.  Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book, Little House on the Prairie was set here, as was By the Shores of Silver Lake.  It was lunchtime when we hit town so we decided to stop and visit the Wilder’s.  They weren’t home and their house was all locked up.  The house is a work in progress, was moved to its current site just a few years ago, and has yet to be restored inside.

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Coincidentally, en route to the Twin Cities, we drove through another small town where the Wilders lived: Pepin, WI.  Little House in the Woods was set there.  We didn’t stop, were in a hurry to get to our campground and commence deskunkification.  Probably wouldn’t have stopped anyway, too many points of interest, too little time.  Back in my whippersnapper days, I read all of Laura’s books and enjoyed them, as did Trish.

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We stopped in Watertown to visit LHC friends Jim and Joan, who have a lovely home on a nearby lake.  Jim loves to hunt and fish; J/J had us over for a delicious dinner of walleye pike Jim caught.

Bird's the word!

Our next stop was Huron, to see Bill, Trish’s work colleague from years past.  Huron is the home of The World’s Largest Pheasant.  Wowsers!  Can it get any better than this?

Private RV Parks

I've whined and bitched about private RV parks a lot.  That's because many are poorly laid out, poorly maintained, overpriced, aesthetic nightmares with spaces so close together you can barely extend your slide-room or open your canopy.  Several have family-oriented amenities like swimming pools, rec rooms and play areas - which are of no value to us.   Roughly 15% are the equivalent of flophouse hotels with junker RVs and matching residents.  Finally, many have employees with people skills that rival either those of a moray eel or a Gestapo colonel passed over for promotion.  Twice.

So, why do we even stop at privates?  Because many offer the convenience of full hookups and laundry facilities.  And, sometimes privates are the only game in town, especially if you want to be within a few minutes drive of a sizable city.

All the spaces have a pull-through layout, much favored by RVers.

The spaces are 60' long and can accommodate the longest rigs. 

There are delightful exceptions and we're delighted to be in one of them now: St Cloud RV Park, St Cloud, MN.  No whining.  No bitching.  Nothing but compliments.  This was a spur of the moment one-night stop, chosen because we needed to do laundry and wanted the no-hassle convenience of full hookups.  We found it on our favorite website, rvparkreviews.com.  This website includes both private and public parks and allows you to search and filter parks by state, city and amenities.

Each space has a couple of mature trees and a stretch of grass.

The building on the left houses the laundry, showers and restrooms - all clean and well maintained.

I just signed up as a contributing member of rvparkreviews.  This park will be the subject of my first review/rating and I'm giving them a perfect score of 10 points.  I'll not be reviewing every park/campground we visit.  The exceptional ones will get a pat on the back.  The lousy ones will get reamed out.  The okay ones I'll probably not bother with, will leave that up to other reviewers.  My reviews will have the display name of 'wordsmith'.  

Al and Gin

Al and Gin.

They just got this snazzy new Bennington pontoon.

Enjoying the ride.

Al's a charter member of the Arizona Mafia, as am I.  As mafias go, ours is quite small, 4 members total, including Tom and Gene.  The organization is only a few years old, although the members have known each other for 50 years.  We are fraternity brothers, graduates of Minnesota State University at Moorhead, seasonal AZ residents, poker players, beer drinkers and, last but not least, consummate bullshitters.  We've not ventured into the nefarious activities - prostitution, racketeering, bootlegging and so on - embraced by some mafias and we're not going to.  That would be too much like work.  The hell with it.  We're retired!

Above and below, Al and Gin's beautiful home.

They live on a big lake close to Duluth.

Gin's a collector extraordinaire.  She's an antiques expert, has extensive collections of oak furniture, classic enamelware and other assorted goodies.  Al enjoys buying and selling stuff.  They're both kinda wheeler-dealer-accumulator types.  Their in-depth inventory of some things is amazing; how about 21 tape measures?  I'll bet they have another dozen or more in their winter home near Tucson.

They recently celebrated their 40th anniversary - the event Al used as an excuse to sell their old pontoon and buy the new one.  Gin adopts an air of tolerance and indulgence for Al's whims, but secretly, I think she's very pleased with the new toy.

Trish and I spent one night at their place, the northernmost point of our summer travels.  A and G are fun, giving folks, can't do enough for you.  They served up a humdinger walleye dinner and a delicious breakfast of Danish pancakes, fruit and sausage.  Next time, we'll have to stay longer, see what other culinary delights they come up with.

Skunked

The Cove Restaurant in Buffalo City, WI is popular, especially on Fridays with their all-you-can-eat fish fry.  Trish, Heidi and I, had the standard fish fry; Gary and Michael went for the 'all'.  Heidi's my niece, Gary's her husband, and Michael's their son.  Our RV is parked in Heidi and Gary's yard, our first stop after our cross-country trek from Taos.  I've gotta say this may be our best campground ever. It's flat, has a full-on view of the Mississippi and the bluffs on the MN side, electrical and water hookups, the price is right and the owners are great people to be with.

It was dark when we returned from the restaurant and cranked up the fire pit.  We'd been sitting around the fire, shooting the breeze for awhile, when suddenly Artie and Ranger took off at full gallop, headed for the front of the house.  We looked over to where they were headed and saw a string of small critters. Black and white critters.  There were 7 of them: mom and 6 cubs.  They were headed for the front porch and hesitated only briefly when the dogs appeared.

Trish, of course, was hollering 'Stop!' as loud as she could - which wasn't quite loud enough as it turned out.  Ranger got a partial blast; Artie escaped unscathed.  The skunks wandered around the house a few minutes, then continued on their way.  Ranger didn't react much at first and we didn't realize he'd taken a hit until he was back in the RV and proceeded to rub his face vigorously on our clothing and bedding.  Oh boy!

Trish got right on it, wiping Ranger's affected parts with anything and everything that might alleviate the stench.  She then got online and researched how to remove the smell.  Tomato juice, although long thought to do the trick, does not.  It's worthless.  What does work is a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap - applied as soon as possible after the incident.  We didn't have the first 2 items in stock, and there was no reasonably close place to get them at 10 PM in the evening.

This AM we hooked up and hauled ass up to the Twin Cities and our next campground, stopping along the way to get the dog-wash ingredients.  It's now 7 PM, Ranger has had 2 applications of the magic potion, and we've done 4 loads of laundry.  One more load of laundry and we're fairly sure the incident will be a bad memory instead of a bad smell.

Back East

In '64 and '65, my summers were spent working for the Forest Service in northern Idaho.  That first summer I met Dave, who lived in Clarkston, WA.  When Dave introduced me to others, he added the comment, 'He's from back east.'  That surprised me, never thought of MN as being 'back east.'  But, yeah, if you live in WA, most of the country is back east.

I'm intrigued by many commonly-used geographic references and terms, the Midwest, for instance.   I grew up in MN, which is part of the Midwest.  I never thought of it as 'west', be it mid or otherwise. Geographically, the state is half way between the east and west coasts and it abuts Canada.  Seems to me that Minnesota, plus the Dakotas and Wisconsin should be called Mid-north.

The term Midwest came into use in the 1880's, when the bulk of the population was in the eastern states.  'The east' ended at the western borders of New York and Pennsylvania; everything beyond those borders, starting with Ohio, was 'the west'.  The US census bureau has stayed with historical definition and defines the Midwest as the 12 states between Ohio and the Dakotas, inclusive, extending southward to Kansas and Missouri, inclusive.  This block of states is often referred to as The Heartland.

To round out the picture, the other Census Bureau regions are:
Northeast: from Maine down to, and including, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
South: from West Virginia and Maryland down to, and including, Texas and Oklahoma.
West: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and all states west of these.  

The Bureau divides the above 4 areas into subsets for statistical purposes.  We won't go into that today - or any other day for that matter.  Something tells me that most folks find this subject slightly less exciting than watching paint dry.  My work here is done.