Shelley Munro Blog

I first heard of Deadwood when the HBO show of the same name came out. I started to watch the first one and the swearing horrified me. I think I watched about the first ten minutes before I gave up.

When we decided to visit South Dakota we discussed Deadwood and put it on our itinerary because it sounded interesting. Some people call Deadwood a place where Las Vegas meets the Wild West. There’s certainly lots of history in the town with names like Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Seth Bullock attached to it.
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We;ve spent the last couple of days in Oregon and tonight are just over the border in Walla Walla, Washington. I’m posting a few photos today. The first is of Devil’s Tower, which is in South Dakota. We had our first snake sighting here. It slithered across the path in front of us.

Mr. Munro and I missed checking out the Million Dollar Cowboy bar last time we visited Jackson Hole. This time we made sure we visited. Here’s a photo of me sitting at the bar.

We both really enjoyed our visit to the Oregon Trail Center near Baker City. The displays were excellent and very interesting. Despite the passing of the years it is still possible to see the ruts made by the wagon trains. I don’t envy the people their long trip from Independence, Missouri to Oregon. It wasn’t an easy one.

They also had a man talking about birds of prey while we were there and he had two different owls plus a hawk with him. His talk was fascinating and it was great seeing these birds at close range. Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos. For some reason they had masses of mosquitoes at the Oregon Trail center. They were the size of small birds and very active. I hate mosquitoes! Here’s a photo of one of the wagons in the outside display.

This is Beauty, the mammoth. The mammoth place was fascinating. This particular one is called Beauty because it is almost perfect. There’s a tiny tip missing off one tusk but the skull is otherwise intact with few cracks.

This is a photo of a Bighorn Sheep. We came across three perched on a rock on the side of the road. They were males and argued over the choice bits of tree leaves with loud clashes of horns.

This unknown critter caused great consternation when it tried to stick its head inside the car to investigate me at closer quarters. I moved very quickly to close the window! Hubby couldn’t stop laughing and took this photo.

No photos today since I’m tired and can’t summon the energy to download my camera to my laptop. Last night we stayed at Grand Lake - actually outside Grand Lake - at a campground called Elk Creek in some darling little cabins. Mr. Munro has been very clever with our accommodation and we’ve stayed in a real mix. I was sitting our our terrace having a beer and watched a mouse run across the steps. Mice don’t scare me (unless they choose to run over my feet) so I continued sipping my beer and casually mentioned it to hubby. When he investigated, he found more mice. A family of the wee things. Later that night I kept hearing noises and at one stage shot upright in bed and woke Mr. Munro. It was raining and the patter on the roof had woken me. The mice hadn’t decided to come inisde out of the cold, so I went back to sleep.

Today we drove through the Rocky Mountain National Park. I purchased a book on mountain lions and questioned the ranger for some time. Ranger Michelle was lovely and my story idea is fermenting nicely after all the info she gave me. We saw some moose and stopped to take photos. We also stopped to take photos of some elk. Their antlers were HUGE. I don’t know how they manage to hold their heads up. When we traveled farther into the park, it started sleeting - freezing when you’re wearing shorts! I yanked more clothes out of the suitcase and layered. It worked all right and a hot cider at the information center at the top of the mountain completed the thaw. We enjoyed all our wildlife sightings. Next on the list is bison and beers. We have a list and we’re ticking it off.

Tomorrow we’re driving into South Dekota. Deadwood - here I come!

Oh, I forgot to say that we had a fun time in Cripple Creek and for the first time in history Mr. Munro and I won some money at one of the casinos. Me - the last of the big spenders who puts $1 at a time in the machines, played poker and won. I’m still in shock.