Moose Drool

Well Jess has finally arrived. After a night doing it tough in the Hilton in LA she jumped on a plane to Salt Lake City and then on to Casper in Wyoming where Gae and I were there to meet her.

I think she slept for about 13 hours once she arrived in Gillette but after that it was time for a meal at 'Humphries' and some 'Moose Drool Beer'.

It really doesn't get much better than that on the Friday night before Christmas in Gillette. (I wonder what went on at the Wy Yung Pub back in Bairnsdale???)






Tomorrow we are off to the Big Horn mountains for our first white Christmas, it should be a lot of fun. After that we go to Yellowstone National Park for some snow coaching and snow mobiling, hopefully we'll have lot's of pics to show you when we get back.

Merry Christmas to everyone, we really miss you lot :-))

Have a really happy New Year.

Deadwood and Badlands

Hi again everyone.
Sorry it's taken a while to update the blog but we have been pretty busy and we're also getting organised for Jess to arrive. Unfortunately that was supposed to be today but she arrived in LA on time this morning only to find that all flights to Denver had been cancelled because of a blizzard. The lucky girl gets to spend a night in the Hilton in LA, unfortunately she had to do it on her own.
Hopefully we will be able to get her here tomorrow although we have had to buy her another ticket via Salt Lake City and Casper. People over here are beginning to think they shouldn't travel with us.

Last weekend we took off for the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. It's about an hour east of Rapid City so we decided to stay in Deadwood on Friday night and have a look around before heading over to the park on Saturday. Deadwood was the place where Wild Bill Hickock was killed and also where Calamity Jane and other well known western characters came from.
We were there with another couple from the project and it was good fun to go and visit some of the night time attractions of Deadwood.

We have couple of photo's of Wild Bills and Calamity Janes graves, they are buried side by side.







After leaving Deadwood we headed across to a town called Wall. A tiny town not far from the national park but known world wide for it's drug store (chemist). It sells everything you can possibly imagine, has a small theme park out the back and is a great place to get souvenirs. We had a great time just wandering about.






After leaving Wall we took off into the Badlands. We didn't see any rattle snakes but Gae managed to continue her survey of toilets of the world, that she began while we were on the cruise.






It was very interesting and quite sad to read what had happened to the indians. This whole area of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana is full of history about how the whites took over the land and pushed them all onto reservations.



After the Badlands we went west again and into the Black Hills. We'd been there a couple of times before - Deadwood, Spearfish Canyon etc - so this time we went a bit further south into the Custer State Park. This is probably somewhere that gets really busy in summer but we were lucky enough to have most of the park to ourselves. There were lots of deer and Bison wandering about the road.




After leaving Custer State Park we were on our way home when we came across this frozen lake. The ice was about 8" thick and quite safe to walk on (after we had watched a local). There was a guy out there ice fishing but not catching a lot. It looked like a hard way to catch fish, I think I would have waited until summer and thrown a line in from the edge.




As another update to our blogging capabilities I've added a link to a photo album that gives a few more pictures than you can see here.I hope it works ok, try and let us know. Just click on the picture below and then select the 'Slideshow' button.

Badlands Weekend 17122006

Deadwood

Hi everyone,
It seems to have been a while since we updated the Blog. We've been pretty busy, work's getting in the way of our adventures which is a bit of a pity.
Yesterday we went back to Spearfish Canyon for the night. It was a great place to stay, right on the edge of the creek, deep in the canyon.
We've bought ourselves a new camera so we were keen to take a few shots and see how they came out. So far so good.
The following photo's are a couple of scenery shots. There are some good ones of a frozen waterfall.





After our night in Spearfish Canyon we went to Deadwood, an old western town that is now a Heritage Listed town. The whole mainstreet is just one Saloon after another all full of poker machines and blackjack tables. It looks like a lot of fun and we plan to go back there next weekend and stay the night before heading out into The Badlands of South Dakota for a look.
There's one saloon there that's owned by Kevin Costner and he's put a lot of the original costumes he wore in the bar on display. Dances with Wolves was filmed in and aaround Spearfish Canyon so that's where the connection is.





Deadwood is the place where Wild Bill Hickock was shot and killed. The last photo is of Ge standing at the spot where he was shot. Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are buried side by side in the Deadwood cemetery. We'll get you a photo next week when we're there for a bit longer.