Horse Thief Trail in the Black Hills

It sure didn’t take very long for us to all get into the camping groove, and everything is working out better than we could have imagined. The boys have found a whole bunch of friendly neighbor kids in the 6-12 age range, so they’re tearing around our Sheridan Lake campsite loop with reckless abandon. Their experience is bringing back so many great memories of my childhood camping experiences, and it’s just what I was hoping would happen. The boys made smores over the campstove, since fires are forbidden due to the high fire risk.

Meanwhile Gail has found some excellent running terrain, and did her first run on quiet campground roads bordering the lake. Before she did her run, I went on my first bike ride, the Mount Rushmore scenic loop, around 32 miles and 2900 vertical ft. of climbing. It felt so good to stretch the legs and see where I landed on the Strava leaderboard. I had a bunch of second and third places, but then again, not a lot of folks are posting Strava data around these parts yet. Still, it was nice to know that I was in the ballpark. The climbs here are a little easier than in the Ithaca area, since the grades tend not to exceed 12%, even if they are longer, and the road surface is uniformly great, except for the annoying corrugated rumble strips on the shoulders. Route 244 was most definitely the highlight, with some excellent climbs and stunning views of the backside of Mount Rushmore. It runs east-west from just south of Hill City to Keystone, the tourist trap gateway to Mount Rushmore. I ended up doing something like two Cat 3 climbs and three Cat 4s, and it was similar to doing the familiar Ringwood, Hurd and Hunt loop. On the twisty descent from Rushmore I saw a spotted another cyclist making the climb up, an older gentleman who I’m guessing was a regular. I’ll be following his lead in a few days when I do this route again in the opposite direction.

On 244 I encountered an odd scene. A woman was walking along the shoulder and seemed in distress, and just ahead of her was a very friendly but clueless dog wandering on and off of the road. I stopped to talk to her, only to witness her dog getting almost hit by three separate vehicles in the span of a minute. The dog was hers, but she had no leash and the dog was having too much fun chasing squirrels to listen to her. The poor woman is a local resident whose car broke down on Rt. 244 with electrical problems last night. She didn’t have a leash, and there was no cell phone coverage in that stretch, so she had been stranded overnight and straight through 10:30, since no one bothered to stop and check to see if she needed assistance. Without a leash, she was doing her best to coax her dog to stay off of the road as she made the long walk to the KOA campground. We somehow coaxed her dog to come over and I gave her my spare tube, which functioned well as a leash. It was pretty sad to think that she wasn’t given the time of day from any tourist zipping by.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch on Sheridan Lake and some swimming at the sandy beach with nearly bath water temperatures. After that, we headed to a National Forest wilderness trail at the backside of Mount Rushmore called Horse Thief trail. I spotted the trailhead during my morning ride, and it turned out to be an excellent first hike for the boys, who enthusiastically marched through the pines, white birch and giant rock formations with their mysterious openings and small caves. I really understand now why the Sioux treasured this mystical land.

After ice cream at Mount Rushmore, we made a burrito feast and thought about how nice it would be to have a shower with some soap. Suffice it to say that it’s a good thing that Gail and I have a very large tent.

Morning Addendum:

We had our first rain last night, accompanied by a thunderstorm. The boys joined us in our tent last night, so we had some cozy family time, and we woke up very rested. We’re all a bit soggy this morning, but the sun is shining and it looks to be yet another spectacular Black Hills day.

Oh, and one more thing...If you're ever in this part of South Dakota, you really need to listen KILI, 90.1 FM, an independent non-commercial radio station run by the Lakota people from the Pine Ridge Reservation. Fascinating, educational and often hilarious conversation and lots of contemporary and traditional American Indian music.

Mitchell SD to the Black Hills

Good morning! I’m writing this post from our beautiful campsite on South Dakota’s Sheridan Lake. It’s early (not yet 7 am), and we’ve already been awake for way too long. Why can’t anyone in my family seem to sleep past 5:30 when we’re camping? Especially when we were up so late last night!

Anyway, we woke up in Mitchell yesterday morning and got out of town quickly after doing some grocery shopping at County Wide, which boasted a really nice selection of goods and wine. The weather forecast called for temperatures over 100 degrees in Mitchell, and we were eager to get on the road. Luckily, we drove out of the worst of the heat and by the time we stopped at Wall Drug it was in the 80s and breezy.

The boys thought Wall Drug was the highlight of the trip so far. Of course, the gazillions of billboards built up their anticipation sky high and they weren’t disappointed. They spent a lot of time looking at pocket knives, and the lady behind the counter was very patient about answering their questions. They each spent some of their money on small knives and carving around the campsite will be a big occupation for them.

We all loved the change in landscape from the endless flat fields to the hilly country. Seeing the Badlands was just amazing. They suddenly loom up out of the landscape without much warning, looking sort of alien after hours and hours of monotonous green fields. From there we saw the Black Hills in the distance, and were soon driving into the piney woods.

The air here is fresh and clear, pine-scented and refreshing. After setting up camp, the boys quickly made friends with some neighbors from Louisiana and ran around, happy to be out of the car. We fit in a quick bike ride before having an early dinner, and then we headed out to enjoy the evening of the 4^th at Mount Rushmore.

What a hoot that was! It was crowded, of course, and people watching was part of the fun. There were tons of flag shirts along with an unbelievable variety of sparkly, starry, patriotic-themed headbands, and I heard many different accents (American and otherwise) throughout the evening. We decided to wait for the evening lighting ceremony and that was by turns annoying, hilarious, and touching. We took our seats around 8:15, nearly an hour before the scheduled start to the show. Some of us are better than others at waiting, so the time passed kind of slowly. Finally, the ranger emerged onto the amphitheater stage to start the program. Alas…her microphone wasn’t working! She scurried backstage to get things working and we all waited. And waited. She nipped out to apologize (yelling at the top of her lungs to the assembled crowd), then went backstage again. After a while, they started the video that precedes the lighting of the monument, but there was no sound and the curtains in front of the screen had only parted a few feet. We could see portions of the video and some of the closed-captioning, so it was a bit surreal. We laughed ourselves silly reading the bits of words that we could see. They finally got their sound issues straightened out and the ceremony began. The lights come up slowly, so the monument seems to glow in the darkness. Then the ranger called down all service members and Peace Corps members from the audience. This was a touching sight, as a huge number of people came on stage and accepted our thanks for their service.

We made it back to camp after 10:30 and the boys crashed quickly. We all woke up to an owl hooting sometime in the middle of the night, and were all up for the day woefully early. It’s cool and cloudy, with a chance of thunderstorms today, and we’re looking forward to minimal driving. We’ll probably go for a hike later, and Armin’s setting off to bike on some hilly, twisty, beautiful roads. I need to put on my running shoes at some point today. I haven’t gone running since Saturday and I’m wondering if I’ll feel refreshingly speedy after the time off, or if I’ll feel like my legs are made of sandbags.