Day 4: 1880 Town near Belvedire, SD to the Badlands to Deadwood, South Dakota

Start: Belvedire, South Dakota
Finish: Deadwood, South Dakota
Distance: 185 miles Total to date: 1600 miles
Campground: KOA Campground, Deadwood, South Dakota; $39/site no electrical; tiny 20 x 20 lot
Gas: Wall, South Dakota 3.34 gal @ $3.599/gal $12.02

On Day 4, we started off by visiting the 1880 town that was located on Hwy 163 just next to the Belvedire KOA. This was an excellent way to start the day as it was so close and so interesting. The town has many buildings and artifacts from the late 1800's. There is a ton of history including artifacts from Custer's Last Stand where he and many U.S. cavalry troops were annihilated by Sitting Bull.It also had many of the movie props of the movie Dancing With Wolves starring Kevin Costner. The horse Kevin Costner used in the movie still lives in the 1880 town
There were many buildings from the early 1800's including a saloon, jail, stable, sheriff's office and farm homesteads. They were filled with items of the day and had many stories relating to the items. It's a definite site to see.

Once we finished touring the buildings, we had a quick lunch inside an old passenger train that was being used as a dining car.

We talked with a couple that had just arrived from Rapid City and they mentioned that they had to ride through some ugly rainy and windy weather. From that info, we donned our rain gear and headed down the Interstate 90 on our way to the Badlands National Park.
Even though we had been through the park last year, we were still awed by the impressive formations and the uniqueness of the park. We stopped at the many scenic sites to take a view and some pics and meandered thru the park.

At the exit of the park, we were close to Wall, South Dakota and since we were sucked in by all the highway signs promoting Wall Drug, we were curious and decided to take a look at the store. The drug store had a very unique setting in the town of Wall and was just full of everything a tourist would want or not want. We had a homemade ice-cream, walked thru the store and quickly decided we had our fill.
We decided to make a KOA in Deadwood our final destination and as a result, we went thru the town of Sturgis to see why bikers would flock to this town each year. Since it was not Biker's Week, there was not a lot to see, but there was evidence that this one week fling-ding, once a year, means a hell of a lot to this small town. Al bought a few things for his Harley, we took a pic of him sitting on his Harley outside the Sturgis Harley store and that was all we needed to do and see of Sturgis.
We took a very scenic Hwy 14 route that went thru a canyon, had many sweeping curves and we ended up in the KOA that was just outside the town of Deadwood.It was not a very impressive site and we had to jam our bikes and trailers into a very small site. We grilled a few hotdogs and that ended our day.
Tomorrow, we'll head south towards Mount Rushmore and start our journey southward towards Cheyenne, Wyoming.