Wild West adventure continued.

After arrival in Keystone, we set off to explore the town.
Population is 337 when tourists are not in town.
Keystone is the gateway to Mount Rushmore.  

On our exploration of the town, we discovered some chainsaw artists.

Just one of the many chairs scattered around the town. A lot of wood carving for sale, I could just see one of these in my yard.

Mount Rushmore was the vision of Gutzon Borglum who commenced the sculpting in the early 1900's.

That evening we dined at Ruby's, de'core resembled a saloon and brothel from the Wild West. 

I had bison stew in a bread bun.,..delicious.

The next morning, our first stop was Mount Rushmore. 

What an amazing fest of ingenuity,  unless you have seen this mountain with the president's head carved, it is hard to imagine the enormity of what was achieved with such limited machinery.

We had a couple of hours here and did the long walk, so that we could get every perspective, the air was a little thin, due to altitude, so plenty of water and gradual steps.

After our visit to Mount Rushmore we went to the Crazy Horse monument, which was commenced in 1948 and still a work in progress.

This will be what it looks like when finished.

After this visit we proceeded onto Deadwood, here we visited Tatanka, Kevin Costner built this  museum after his movie, "Dancing with Wolves"ar a cost of $5,000.000,

This is a sculpture depicting native Americans, hunting the bison into a pit, at a cost of $3,000,000, Tatanka was established to help preserve the bison population.

After this visit we went on a Deadwood tour in an old school bus, and was entertained with a running commentary from our bus driver.

Our school bus.

Gateway to Deadwood, population 1,260 and has as many poker machines, council earns $35,000,000 in gambling royalties.

Deadwood is where Wild Bill Hickock was shot. 

More to follow 

Out and about in the Wild West

 Thursday the 1st June had us jetting off to Denver, Colorado to fulfil, one more wish off our bucket list. On our list was to visit Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National park and Monument Valley in Utah, travelling from South Dakota  to Las Vegas. 

After leaving Sydney and flying to Denver which took 24hrs,  we arrived safely.

Denver has a population of 620,000 in the city and 2.6,000,000 in the greater surrounds, Denver is famously callled the mile high city,  due to its elevation

Downtown Denver is quite colorful with tasteful graffiti on buildings.

Our first day was spent exploring the city, where we availed ourselves of the free mall ride and our first day was spent visiting Union Station and Capitol Hill.

We had a great afternoon exploring and finished off the evening with a great steak meal and then an early night.

The next day we caught a local bus to go out to Santa Fe to visit the art district, where we spent a few leisurely hours viewing art and exploring the shops. 

My first great find and buy, 6 yards for $12, not bad!

After this we went to visit Molly Browns house.

You might ask who is Molly Brown, well a brief history lesson, she was a daughter of an irish immigrant family and married a man that discovered gold, from being poor to wealthy, she was also a suffregett  and is most fmous for being a heroine on the Titanic, known as the unsinkable Molly Brown. She helped rescue many women and children.

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Molly Browns house.

This was the end of our exploration of Denver, tomorrow we join the tour and depart for Keystone

On our way to Keystone we stopped at a town called Torrington, and found my first quilt store.

We arrived in Keystone around 4pm and explored the town, we are officially in the Wild West.