Thinks happen: Sunday Funnies - All your favorites

Yes, bill boards do have a way of exaggerating reality.

Much of the commercial signage in Deadwood was more subdued and about gambling. This one however is strategically placed at the south end of the central Main Street. Unfortunately I didn’t get a shot wide enough to include something that would give reference to how large the sign is.

The main street was continuous gambling rooms and restaurants. The city claims more than 80 casinos. Good restaurants seemed a little scarcer. Actually since Annie and I are both on the brink of vegetarianism and gambling holds no appeal to us at all, one would wonder why we stayed three days in Deadwood.

Actually Deadwood looked fairly central to the locations we wanted to visit on our little excursion. We saw Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Devil’s Tower, the gold mine and some spectacular scenery in between. We also wanted a place we could take a stroll in the evenings. Once we got to the area, we realized there were other towns that might have done as well.

Deadwood has a lot of frontier history too. Little of it can be seen there, however, as the town has burned to the ground a number of times in the past 100 years. The original buildings are long gone.

There were signs in the windows of several shops inviting customers to “come in and see where Wild Bill Hickok was shot.” Actually there really is a “Saloon No. 10” named for the one where Hickok held his last hand of aces and eights. But it is now across the street from where the original bar stood. (All the revisionists are not in politics.)