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Ah, there's nothing finer than an autumn day in California's Sierra Nevada range: warm sunshine, crisp nights, golden aspen leaves, and shockingly blue skies. Not that spring, summer, and winter are less than spectacular here.

If you're tired of Las Vegas heat, L.A. smog, or Bay Area dampness, folks at Rock Creek Lodge would like you to remember a number: 9,373. That's their elevation in feet above sea level.

If you're passing through beautiful Owens Valley on "scenic drive" portion of U.S 395, you might never guess lodge was there. At Tom's Place, a small collection of houses by highway between Bishop and popular Mammoth Lakes ski area, you turn toward mountains towering above you on west side. You wind your way up into Rock Creek Canyon as high desert gives way to an alpine environment. The trees get taller and you pass some very nice campgrounds as air grows thinner and cooler. Ahhhh!

If you're not too distracted by majestic old cedars and Jeffrey Pines on rocky slopes, you'll see Rock Creek Lodge's brown wooden sign on your left after about eight miles. If you arrive at a beautiful mountain lake, you've gone a little too far. The lodge is located a half mile below Rock Creek Lake. A wooden bridge over picturesque stream brings you to lodge's main building.

What's this - flowers in my dinner? The chalkboard in lodge's window announces bill of fare for evening's meal in cozy dining room. Now, any food served on a cool evening in mountains can be called "comfort food," but if you're expecting burgers & beans here, you're in for a pleasant surprise. My dinner featured pork chops with sage and gravy, braised lentils, spinach salad with walnuts, fantastic home-baked potato bread - and "four lily soup." Did you know that garlic, shallots, leeks, and scallions are all members of lily family? This creamy soup had a marvelous flavor.

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I grew up in these Black Hills — and history of Old West hell raising mining camp of Deadwood is embedded into these hills as deep as ore in 8,500 foot Homestake Mine up in Lead, now closed full of water, and soon to be a scientific underground laboratory.

You have probably seen Hollywood version of Deadwood on HBO. As a series, how close does it come to true life characters that put rawboned territorial town on map?

LEGENDS OF DEADWOOD

Wild Bill Hickok, born James Butler Hickok in Tiny Grove, Illinois on May 27, 1837. He married Mrs. Ames Thatcher on March 5, 1876 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Wild Bill was murdered in original Saloon No. 10 on August 2, 1876 by Jack McCall.

Quite aside from images of Black Hills gold rush and Sioux Indian wars, Deadwood is famed in public's mind as place where "Wild Bill" Hickok was murdered while playing poker in Saloon No.10, holding "Deadman's Hand" of aces, eights, and nine of diamonds.

Civil War spy, scout and sharpshooter, Indian fighter, frontier lawman and showman with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, Hickok was part of West's romantic image — aided no doubt by a Harper's New Monthly Magazine article about him in those terms in 1867

The reality was more complicated as a variety of books and Internet resources note.

Hickok joined a flood of miners, shopkeepers, prostitutes, card players, bunco artists and outlaws, invading raw and just-formed town of Deadwood in June of 1876.

By all accounts, his intent in coming to Deadwood was to separate prospectors and minters from their gold — not at point of a gun, but at poker tables with a winning hand and two pistols at hand for any sore losers in bunch.

Hickok was highly motivated — he was a newlywed with a wife to support. His bride, former Mrs. Agnes Thatcher, was waiting for Hickok back in Cheyenne.