MINUTEMAN MISSILE, DEADWOOD
Stop 1 - The Minuteman Missile
Kudos to Benu and Olga for wanting to see this! I would have never opted to see this on my own and it turned out to be super cool.
I grew up in Eastern South Dakota and, as a child, heard there was a potential foreign military target on the west side of the state. However, I never realized until just today that target was an active missile, just a couple hundred miles from my childhood home.
The Minuteman Missile is an iconic weapon in the American nuclear arsenal and, although it holds the power to destroy civilization, is meant as a deterrent to maintain peace and prevent war. During the Cold War, a vast arsenal of 1,000 nuclear missiles were hidden in plain sight in the great plains of western South Dakota. Hundreds remain today.
Tickets for the Delta-01 missile were booked through the end of summer (where you can actually take an elevator down into the chamber) so we opted instead to visit the Delta-09 missile silo - which is 12 feet in diameter and 80 feet deep ... in the middle of a wide open flat acreage.
Here is a close up of the actual structure behind that chain link fence. Well, what you can see of the structure from above ground, that is.
And here is a (terrible) picture of the actual missile. Recall, this chamber is 12' across. It's huge!
Stop 2 - Deadwood
From the Minuteman Missile exhibit, we drove to Deadwood. And on our way, we took a quick drive through Sturgis, home of the Sturgis Bike Rally, which attracts 500,000 to 700,000 visitors annually, nearly doubling the population of South Dakota every year for a week in August.
From Sturgis, we drove just a few minutes down the road to Deadwood, the inspiration for Deadwood, the HBO TV series.
Deadwood got its start as a mining town, post-Civil War, pre-statehood. Because it was not yet a state, it was literally lawless. It attracted people looking to get rich quick after gold was discovered there, leading to the Black Hills Gold Rush. At its height, the city had a population of 25,000 in 1876-1879 (South Dakota became a state in Nov 1889) and attracted Wild West legends including Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hickok who was killed there.
Today, Deadwood has a population of just 1,270 and the entire town is designated as a National Historic Landmark District for its well-preserved Gold Rush-era architecture. And of course, we didn't get any pictures of the architecture, but we did get some photos of us.
Love this one of Olga and Andrew. ❤️
And this one of Benu and Andrew:
Benu, Andrew, and I tried out ax throwing for the first time.
And here we are, back at the parking lot after a long day. Andrew seems the least thrilled to be leaving Deadwood ... or maybe just the least thrilled, haha.
Stop 3 - Rapid City
After a long day of driving, we headed back to Rapid City where we ate at Thirsty's Pub, just across the street from our hotel, and where we finally got to try chislic for the first time. We are huge fans!
Most closely associated with South Dakota, chislic is cubes of red meat (we had beef, although venison is very common in South Dakota as well) that is deep-fried, seasoned with garlic or seasoned salt, and served with toothpicks. Coincidentally, it was introduced to the US by an immigrant from Crimea, which has ties to Ukraine, which is where Olga is from!
From there, it was back to the hotel to rest up before an early morning ride to the airport. Our three days went so fast and we had so much fun!