Blogs from South Dakota, United States, North America - page 3

Day 13 - Another early start to the day for our ride to Cody, Wyoming. A brief stop in Cody at Wayne's Boot World, where I bought my boots in 2014, thanks to eagle eye Snapper. Bought some cream for Nifty's boots and Angela's jacket, I was almost talked into a couple of western belts but managed to stay strong, there'll be more Western stores along the road. From here an uninteresting ride to Meeteetse, then onto Thermopolis for morning tea. We sat in a beautiful park by the hot springs, inhaling that unforgettable sulphur odour which wafted across town. Next up was a section that I have been looking forward to, Wind River Canyon, which runs from Thermopolis to Shoshoni along the Wind River. Another terrific canyon ride, which I filmed on the Go Pro, ... read more

We were up super early (for us) this morning—5:30 AM. We followed our plan to get to the laundromat first thing, arriving there at 8:00! Yay us!! We did our clothes, had breakfast, and were on the road at 9:30. Our first stop was at the Sanford Lab Homestake Visitor Center in Lead (pronounced “leed”) South Dakota. This was a great stop. We took an hour trolley tour of the old mining town of Lead and then a short overview of the Sanford Underground Research Facility which is in the old Homestake Mine tunnels. If you are interested in the “sciencey” part of this, I recommend looking it up on Google. They are in the process of building the world’s flagship Neutrino Experiment. An international team of 1,000 scientists and engineers from more than 30 countries ... read more

Yesterday evening we took a two mile walk on the George S. Mickelson Trail which lies directly behind our campground. It was named in honor of a former governor of South Dakota who really pushed for this trail before he died in a plane crash in 1993. It runs through the Black Hills and connects Deadwood with Edgemont. “The crushed stone pathway incorporates nearly 100 converted railroad bridges and 4 tunnels, and much of it traverses national forest; however, some segments pass through private lands and users are asked to respect landowner rights.” “In many places the trail is notched into the mountains—pressed up against granite walls to one side and dropping off steeply on the other. The granite gives way to slabs of slate stacked haphazardly like tall, thin texts on a bookshelf. Since the ... read more

We can explain...well, really, no we can’t... Yesterday afternoon we left you with the information that we were going to walk downtown and if anything happened, we would report on it today. Well...it really is a sad tale, and it is all Lora C’s fault. She wanted a picture of a bakery. Well, we walked to the end of town and started back up when we spied Turtle Town Candy Shop. We walked inside and I took a picture of their candy display. It is lovely as I am sure you will agree. Even though it looked delicious, we bravely left Turtle Town and continued our walk up Main Street towards our campground at the other end of town. As luck would have it, we passed Hill City Cafe and Bakery. We walked inside but didn‘t ... read more

Our intention today was to have a very slow one...and that was more or less what we did...kinda, sorta! We were up fairly early but that was because we were in bed last night fairly early. We took our time getting cleaned up and then having a late breakfast. Our morning was spectacular with cool temps (44 at 5:45 this morning) and a brilliant sun in crystal clear blue sky—just the way we like it. Of course, the humidity is very low here and the sun did warm us up quickly. Since we are so close to town—actually we are on the outside edge of Hill City—we decided to walk down the “rails to trails” path that goes right through our camp ground. We had intended to make a 2 mile or so walk into town ... read more