I Pity the Fool's Gold

(This is part 4 of the Black Hills vacation series. If you'd like to start at the beginning, click here.)

Ahhh, finally a decent night’s sleep. Sure, I sleep better on an air mattress, in a tumble-down shack with crooked floors, than I did in the 3 star Clubhouse Suite. Let’s not read too much into this. We sat down in the cubicle size eating area to enjoy our travel breakfast - pop tarts! We’re all pretty excited about those rare coveted pop tarts, but having a horse outside our window was what really made the meal pop.

We decided to take a stroll down to the creek with some gold panning supplies. A kid needs a dream, right? 

After only a few minutes, look what #2 found!! That’s a pretty sweet little gold nugget. His score really revved up the rest of us to search too. But all the luck landed on #2, he found 3 gold nuggets while the rest of us came out with only a pair of soaked shoes and gold rush envy.

If you’ve ever panned for gold, you know this type of find is impossible. Tourists never find gold! If you are lucky, you’ll find a speck of fool’s gold. We found out later from the owner, a mom had brought fake gold nuggets and tossed them in the creek a while back, for her kids to find. Don’t tell though…it’s our secret, and that great idea is there for the taking.

Now we’re ready to see Mount Rushmore. While you can see the monument from the highway, the view isn’t close and is obscured by the entrance fee station. Our government spent about a million dollars over 14 years, through the great depression no less, constructing the monument. They need to recoup some of that expense, right? It is impressive, and the trails leading up for a closer look are comparable to taking a stair stepping class. The kids were wiped out at the top. #4 collapsed on the ground and wouldn't go any further. The kicker is that I had carried him the whole way!

After stair stepping to a close-up of “The Big Heads” (my husband's term - not mine), we drove into Keystone to tour a gold mine. Our tour guide was very entertaining and informative, and great at keeping the kids engaged and calm. This tour further reinforced the fact that searching for gold is a boondoggle; the two Germans who owned the mine spent over 30 years mining and never found more than about 2 ounces of gold. Wow. Talk about an antiquated attention span. How long do you think our generation would hold out hand-drilling in a mine by candlelight? About a day? Maybe two days? Amazing. They have panning at the Big Thunder Gold Mine as well, but we’d used up our luck for the day so we skipped it.

After a little resting up at the cabin, we hopped on our bikes and took the Mickelson Trail into downtown Hill City. There’s a great market and liquor store, and on the way we went right past the train station where a fully operational steam locomotive still boards for travel back and forth between Keystone and Hill City. We were thinking that our 3 year old train-loving kid would like to ride on the real steam engine, but we had to think again. It must have been the noise of the engine that scared him, because he wouldn't hear of boarding that train. I'm sure the 2 hour round trip to Keystone would have been really amazing -- but not with a terrified kid on board. Maybe next time.

Hill City also has several restaurants to choose from, but we weren't in the mood for eating out tonight. We planned to head back to the cabin and fire up the Weber grill. On our way back, we spied a few great restaurants to check out tomorrow night. 

Look out Hill City - the circus is coming to town tomorrow night - and we'll be hungry.

Continue reading part 5.