Okay, so I'm just practicing right now, but I'll get it down soon.

I've been away for awhile, gone but not forgotten. We had a lot of fun this weekend. I'll start with the mushy stuff. Wife and I went to Lachstring Restaurant ... this is a log building in the middle of beautiful Spearfish Canyon ... so imagine having towering cliffs surrounding you on all sides with a beautiful stream slicing through the middle, and then delicious eats to boot (Buffalo, Grilled Chicken, you name it). The evening before, we went to the town of Spearfish and tried some Italian that was quite, oh, so good.

I've been pounding away at my hell-acious cardio ... we're talking 35 minutes at an incline following by 20 minutes of high-intensity interval training. It feels GOOD I must say.

So what is there to do here?

Well, there is the rodeo, the parades, even the mock-up old-style town. We did a little of all of it this weekend, for the legenday Days of '76 ... a fun Old Western-style celebration in our sister town of Deadwood. As always, click to see it bigger.

You see things like mad broncos trying to clear their riders:



The only thing worse than a bronco with your number is a steer just as mad (I apologize for the poor quality - it was getting late):



A little bit of history in the parade, as the descendants of a former Chinatown citizen danced and kung-fooed their way down the street:



Of course, sometimes little girls act up, and we have to find the local coffin and establish some discipline:



Come on, you known I'm kidding here ... just some Deadwood fun! Of course, it wasn't too fun for Custer when his entire regimen was lost ... so the local folk like to salute his memory:



My wife thought this family portrait would have a nice Main Street back-drop:



Strange, these old towns, but while the windows appeared blank, some ghosts came out in the photos ... who's the man with the horse?



Spooky! Anyway, we enjoyed seeing the well-disciplined Clydsdales ... or however you spell it - magnificent horses to say the least:



And no parade in Deadwood would be complete without paying respects to the original title-deed owners - considering that we said, "This is your land ... no it's not." Here is the tribute:



WHOOO-HOOO!!!! The 842nd returned home a few days ago. What a nice salute to our servicemen who keep this country free and safe:



Turn the wrong corner, and you could end up in another time ...



I thought I was fairly pioneering when I left my full time job to pursue this adventure of free enterprise. Then I met THESE *TRUE* pioneers:



Of course, out here in the woods, we have our bear to keep us out of trouble. He does things like tell us what the probability of a fire is going to be. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it - maybe this is terrible, but when I saw him, I could only think of the character "Smokey" from "Friday" and kept hearing the character saying .. "Smokey! Smokey!!!!!!!"



Whew! That's a lot of pictures. I just have to say, while the cost of living here is much lower, it is a lot harder to get food on the plate. Case in point ... look what we have to go through just to get a steak around here:



Hope you enjoyed that. I'll be "seeing" ya!

Jeremy Likness