Reading Rendezvous is a weekly feature created by the Fern Team for the Book Blogger Creativity Project that acts as a travel guide, highlighting places we would like to visit and recommending books that take place there.

This week I would like to again feature South Dakota, but this time I want to feature the BEAUTIFUL Black Hills! The book that I will be featuring takes place in Deadwood, SD!

Deadwood is basically a historic old gambling town. I spent my 21st birthday there!

There's lots to see and do in the Deadwood. I mean, besides stuffing yourself silly at any of the various casinos that offer up all you can eat prime rib and crab leg buffets!

You can obviously gamble. At giant machines.

You can get old time photos taken! I actually got these taken in the town where I live. Because when we went for my 21st birthday, my boyfriend refused to get the pictures taken with me there. It was the only thing I requested for my birthday trip!

You can take the Spearfish scenic byway and get a sweet view of the Black Hills.

It's also not too terribly long of a drive to Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse memorial, Custer State Park (wildlife park), Bear Country USA (another wildlife park... WITH BEARS), Reptile Gardens (it's kinda like a zoo.. for snakes and lizards and birds). In August, the Black Hills also hosts the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally! Which is basically awesome. 

So basically what you should gather from this is that the Black Hills is amazing! And definitely worth seeing, should you ever decide to vacation to South Dakota.

On to the book that takes place in Deadwood, SD!

Deadwood by Pete Dexter

Publisher: Random House, Inc.

Publication Date: March 12, 1986

Pages: 365

Add it on Goodreads!

Summary (from Goodreads):

DEADWOOD, DAKOTA TERRITORIES, 1876: Legendary gunman Wild Bill Hickcock and his friend Charlie Utter have come to the Black Hills town of Deadwood fresh from Cheyenne, fleeing an ungrateful populace. Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.

Fun fact about Deadwood and Wild Bill Hickock: You can visit the saloon that he was assassinated in while playing cards. That is where the Dead Man's Hand came from. It's the hand of cards that he was holding when he died. You can also visit his and Calamity Jane's graves in the cemetery!

Links to the rest of my Fern Team!

Sheridan @ I Turn The Pages

Lizzie @ Big Books And Grande Lattes

Tamara @ Tamaraniac

Katherine @ Neon Yeti Reads

Ashley @ Books Buying Beauty

Shayna @ Bibliophilia: A Love Story

Lauren @ SERIESous Book Reviews

Karen @ My Train Of Thoughts On

Nori @ Readwritelove28

New Feature! Reading Rendezvous (#1)

Reading Rendezvous is a weekly feature created by the Fern Team for the Book Blogger Creativity Project that acts as a travel guide, highlighting places we would like to visit and recommending books that take place there.

This is the first post of a new feature created by our group for the Book Blogger Creativity Project that was started by Nori. In order to introduce everyone involved in our group, we are doing our first post as a group kind of. Each of us will be featuring an author from the state we are from!

So, since I am from South Dakota, the author that I would like to feature is Laura Ingalls Wilder! She was originally born in Wisconsin, but she did live in South Dakota for awhile around the time when she would have been 12. Her family moved from Plum Creek, MN to what would someday become De Smet, SD.

So with that said, my place of interest in South Dakota that I would like to feature is De Smet, South Dakota!

While there isn't much to see in De Smet (trust me, I've been there), there are several attractions centered around the Ingalls family!

The first attraction is the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Homes Tour! You get to see the Surveyor's Shanty, which is the first house Laura and her family lived in when they moved to the Dakota Territory!

They also still have the original school that Laura attended in the area and a replica of the first school that Laura taught in.

Then they have the final home of Ma, Pa, and Mary (Laura's blind sister) Ingalls which was built in 1887 and still stands today filled with items belonging to the Ingalls family!

There are over 50 sites you can visit on your own that are mentioned in her books. One of them being the De Smet cemetery where you can find the final resting places of several members of the Ingalls family as well as some other names you may see mentioned in the books. Another of them being Silver Lake, which I actually don't believe is there anymore.

They also have the Ingalls Homestead that you can do activities at that the Ingalls family had to do. For example, during the winter of 1880-1881, the residents of De Smet had to twist hay into sticks for fuel and grind seed wheat into flour to make bread because the supply trains couldn't get to them.

Another example is making a corn cob doll. Before Laura's mom made her doll she called Charlotte, she played with a corn cob wrapped in a handkerchief. Each person gets to shell an ear of corn with an old-fashioned corn sheller and wrap it in a 'blanket' to take home.

Here are some pictures of me on an elementary school field trip to the homestead! I'm the one in the Pooh sweater.

The book that features both South Dakota and De Smet by Laura Ingalls Wilder is

By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder

(Little House on the Prairie #5)

Publisher: Harper & Row, Publishers

Publication Date: October 14, 1953 (originally published in 1939 I believe)

Pages: 291

Add it on Goodreads!!

Summary (from Goodreads):

The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they move from their little house on the banks of Plum Creek to the wilderness of the unsettled Dakota Territory. Here Pa works on the new railroad until he finds a homestead claim that is perfect for their new little house. Laura takes her first train ride as she, her sisters, and their mother come out to live with Pa on the shores of Silver Lake. After a lonely winter in the surveyors' house, Pa puts up the first building in what will soon be a brand-new town on the beautiful shores of Silver Lake. The Ingallses' covered-wagon travels are finally over.

Check out what places and authors the rest of my group featured!

Sheridan @ I Turn The Pages

Lizzie @ Big Books And Grande Lattes

Tamara @ Tamaraniac

Katherine @ Neon Yeti Reads

Ashley @ Books Buying Beauty

Shayna @ Bibliophilia: A Love Story

Lauren @ SERIESous Book Reviews

Karen @ My Train Of Thoughts On

Nori @ Readwritelove28

What do you think of our new feature? Does it sound like fun? Try it out!