Let It Ride!

 

Um... are you talking about a motorcycle ride or gambling?

Yes.

I got out for a motorcycle ride this morning.  Early was better because the high for today is going to be in the 90s.  It was a good ride: hardly any traffic.  You'll have to trust me because I didn't shoot any video or still images.  I listened to The Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM and just enjoyed the ride.

After I got back, I cleaned up and it was off to Deadwood.  Joan has been wanting to go there since we got to the Black Hills... other stuff always came up.  Last night, I said, "It is supposed to be hot and windy tomorrow - how about we go to Deadwood, have lunch, you can throw some money at a machine, and get a Saloon #10 T-shirt."  Mission accomplished.

We parked in the ramp one block of Main Street and wandered around a bit.  Joan said, "Let's go into this one (casino)..."  Any one is good for me.  She sat down at a machine and I walked around a bit.  This particular casino had older machines... nothing fancy.  I found a poker machine and put in $5, to keep me occupied while she played.  One of us doubled his money - I won't say who it was, but it was me.  The other one played her $20 down to 32¢ - I won't say who she was.

We walked around some, went into Saloon #10, where Joan found a shirt she liked.  We walked through Rocksino, a casino operated by the Hard Rock organization.  It just opened here on August 8th.  Then down to Mustang Sally's for bacon cheeseburgers.

Joan asked me, "Can that take photos, or just videos? Take a photo of us..."  No problem...

 Third (forth and fifth) time's the charm...

Deadwood changes, but stays pretty much the same - a casino changes names, a gift shop changes to a t-shirt shop, but is really is pretty much the same as when we lived here.  I remember in 1988 when small stakes ($5 max bet) was voted in for Deadwood - it was the first non-Indian gaming between Atlantic City and Las Vegas starting in 1989.  At the time, it was thought it might do $3 million in revenue the first year - it did over $100 million.  It wasn't long before other states saw what was happening there, and they wanted a piece of that action.  Quite a few states now have legalized gambling, based on what happened in Deadwood.

Deadwood was withering before gambling was legalized - the city's take on the revenue has been put into historic preservation and infrastructure updates.  Downtown looks good these days.

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The video to go with those last couple photos...