Deadwood, SD and Buffalo, WY

We stopped in Deadwood, SD hoping to see an “Old West” town. Mostly we saw “grownup arcades”. We tried to explain gambling to the kids. My take was that it’s like those claw games with the wonderful prizes. It looks like you will absolutely win, but of course you don’t. The kids insisted on a demonstration. I played $5 on $1 and $.25 slots and lost every time.  This is a picture of the kids watching me play the slots.

We stayed in a very interesting/slightly scary hotel in Buffalo, WY. We arrived around 9:30 or 10 at night and were led up creaky stairs down a long dark hallway, around a corner, down another dark hallway and finally down another set of creaky stairs to our rooms. Each of us had our own room, but none were adjoining. We didn’t have keys for the outside of any of the doors, but we might have been able to lock ourselves in. There were signs in each of the rooms stating the hotel was not responsible for our valuables and we should lock them in the safe at the front desk. But as our hostess settled us she said, “We have an excellent security system (?), so the kids would be perfectly safe in the rooms if you two wanted to go have a drink at the saloon.” So I shouldn’t leave my cell phone in the room, but my kids would be fine? We noticed an unlocked door to the basement next to our rooms. There was a light on down there but neither of us was brave enough to investigate. Andy showed me a closet in the hallway with an upper window that looked into our shower! The end of the hallway was a fire exit, which theoretically would only open out to an alley. The entire hotel was like a museum with old photographs everywhere and dinosaur bones and petrified wood in the library. We ended up sleeping with all our doors open. When was the last time you slept in a hotel with your door wide open? Andy ended up in the middle room and Henry with me. Andy went out the next morning to find a laundromat while the kids were still asleep. While he was gone the fire exit door opened from the outside and a HUGE man came in. Without a word he proceeded to change the light bulb in the hall.