On the 4th day of Sturgis

we gambled most the day
and waited for the hail to go away!

We road to Deadwood today and stopped at the tourist information to get the scoop on all the places to go in relation to the HBO series we watched the prompted us to even want to visit Deadwood. It was rather shocking to find out that it wasn't even shot on location but at Gene Autry's Ranch aka Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, California. Guess we will have to take a trip to California now too, but that shouldn't be a problem as that is where my son lives and hope to travel there at least once a year. We paid $5 to park in a hotel parking lot and you got free drinks at the casino (if you're gambling you do anyways, but I don't usually partake) We headed over to the Franklin Inn and grabbed a glass of wine while Ray sat at the Slots. I perused over all the pamphlets to design a plan of attack (on all the touristy places) I also went upstairs to the balcony to take photos and I ended playing the slots anyways, losing 20 at Jacks or Better, but finally my game of choice became available. Lobstermania! Oh how I love fishing for lobster to the tune of the B52's Rock Lobster. Oh how I love winning at the game of Rock Lobster. 60 bucks! Won back my loss, Ray's loss and walked away with $20! Now that's successful gambling to me!

We met a couple from Custer who come to Deadwood to gamble and have dinner on occasion and even offered an house exchange. We live in theirs for a week and they live in ours, which would be great next time we go to Sturgis for us to stay and them to get away. They also suggested heading over to the Silverado for the all you can eat Snow Crab buffet. So we exchanged business cards and filled our faced before heading down the street to explore the rest of the street.

We strolled down Main Street and stopped in where Wild Bill Hickock was shot (with the dead man's hand, Aces and Eights) and played Texas Holdem'. The rules were 5/10/kill and within no time, I was out $50 and stepped away from the table. Ray lost $50 and stepped towards the ATM lol! A while later he was out another $100 so we headed back to the street but it had started to rain, then hail, dime size, nickle, quarter then REALLY hail! Loonie and Toonie size! Ok actually golfball size but I was stay with the gambling theme of $$!!! We stood at the window and watched the bikes get pelted, and a sign us above get smashed with glass crashing down on the sidewalk. Ray threw a $20 into a machine while we were waiting for the storm to pass, down to $10 and won $460! Pretty much paid for the past two days! Thankfully the hail only lasted around 20 minutes (and no more money was lost to the slots) so we headed back to our bike to see how it faired and all was well.

Since it was getting late, we decided to come another day to tour the cemetery and museum but rather than head straight back home (aka hotel) we road around downtown and then headed south to the Spearfish Canyon, flying past The Boars Nest with bikes, bikers and picnic tables outside. We instantly thought of our favourite watering hole in Seven Persons and knew that stopping in was on the list of things to do when we returned next time.

The ride through Spearfish Canyon was wonderful and was lucky there were no animals at dusk this time round. After returning home, we road to the World's Biggest Biggest Bar, The Full Throttle to discover they did not fair so well. As we walked in from the parking lot there was a row of cars with smashed windows. Our bartender explained about the baseball size hail and since the bar is mostly outdoors, no wonder it was not busy at all. We headed across the highway over to Monkey's Rock and it was almost empty as well. Then it was back into town and stopped at the Broken Spoke, but even that wasn't very busy either. I guess the storm sent a lot of people home, especially if they were camping and the rest were at the other two big bars in town... or make that 3. The karaoke place was always hopping, but we passed it over to go back to the hotel to watch the news and weather channel about the recent storm, and rest up for the next plans. SHOPPING!