Alright! Today we ride!
Nobody around to help us figure it out, but we’re resourceful, so off we go!
This is what it looks like:
Beautiful!
Here’s another shot:
What do you think?
Yeah – gorgeous!
Tomorrow, we ride more!
Alright, broke camp early because it was going to be a long drive. Not too bad, at least we gained an hour going into Mountain Time. Had lunch along the way, a quite good burger.
Mid-afternoon, we pulled into Curt Gowdy State Park and set up camp. Water and electric. Well … you have to walk about 80 feet to the water spigot, but it’s by the bathrooms (no water, pit toilet. Hmmmm … this is looking worse by the minute!). But … the park is stunningly beautiful, and that kind of makes up for it a bit.
This is our view from the front door:
Of course, there’s always a downside – while they have a fire ring with a grill so we can cook our fish tonight, this is what the previous tenants left us with:
Why yes, that IS a dirty diaper you see in there. Maybe we’ll go into town for dinner.
Ok, went into town to see an old co-worker of mine, Dan Bond, back from the old Kodak days, checking out his gym, 007 Extreme Fitness. Cool place! If you need a gym and you’re in Cheyenne, go see Dan, either he or his wife Karen will fix you up!
We did go into town for dinner, and tried out Poor Richard’s … Well, we walked in, saw the menu, and decided we did not want to spend a small fortune for dinner, so we walked right back out again. Poor Richard’s? Nope, sorry – at those prices, no way in hell Richard is still poor!
Tomorrow, we ride!
Well, after all the rain last night – AGAIN – we just gave up on riding and decided to let The Bear’s arm have some more time off. Late breakfast of scrambled eggs with onion and bell pepper, plus some AWESOME German smoked sausage we bought at the farmers’ market the other day. WOW, what a breakfast! Plus we had bread and jam (also from the farmers’ market!). We hope to hit a lot of local produce and such while we’re on this trip.
Went to lunch at another eatery suggested by Jaralei – Tally’s Silver Spoon. We had burgers, and they were pretty tasty! Dessert was at another of her suggestions – Armadillo’s Ice Cream Parlor. A word of warning here – DO NOT ORDER LARGE. Seriously. I’m used to getting rooked by eateries, but this place takes the opposite to extreme! The Bear had a Strawberry Butter sherbet on a cone. She got a MEDIUM, and it was fully six (Yes, 6) inches of sherbet above the top of the cone! I got a Large vanilla shake, expecting something maybe 20 oz, but it was 32oz! Wow! Talk about getting your money’s worth! $7.00 for both! Anywhere else, the shake alone would have cost that.
Ok, after that it was just go buy knick-knacks for the pop-up, to make the trip easier. Tonight we pack, so we can get an early start. Wyoming tomorrow!
It rained AGAIN this morning! ARGH!!!
So, we drove out to Custer, SD to visit “The Purple Pie Place”. Another Jaralei recommendation. OOohhh, that girl knows good food!
Here’s the Purple Pie Place – now you understand the name!
The Bear had the Blackberry pie, ala mode, and I had the Bumbleberry pie, also ala mode. I have NO idea what the hell a bumbleberry is, but I can tell you this – they make a good pie!
On the return trip, we stopped by a few trailheads to see the trail conditions – Buzzards Roost should be rideable tomorrow! Woohoo!!!
Upon checking out Victoria’s Secret (down, boys – it’s a trail!), I shot two bucks! Lousy shot of the first, but the second one I got to where you can tell it’s a deer. Wish I’d had a real camera on me!
And then, it rained while we were gone. And it rained this afternoon. And it’s raining tonight, as I write this. I hope these folks appreciate all the rain we brought them! I think our Black Hills rides are over, as we leave on Monday. Oh well, it just means we have to come back!
Well, the curse lives! It seems that any time The Bear and I decide we want to mountain-bike, it rains. Doesn’t matter if the place is in a drought (as South Dakota is right now), the rain will come. It rained last night, but we went to Buzzards Roost Trail anyway, even though today is a rest day, to see how rideable the trail looks. It looks pretty ok, but we decided to rest. Big mistake.
Here is what the Buzzards Roost trail looks like at the start:
Went back to Black Hills Bicycle to talk to Jaralei, and to thank her for the GREAT advice on trails and restaurants, and to clear up some instructions.
We went out to Hill City to eat at the Alpine Inn, another place Jaralei recommended, but the wait was an hour and a half, so that was out. As Barri likes to say “I wouldn’t wait an hour and a half for …” there are several things on that list, I’ll spare you! 40 mile drive for nothing, but around here drive time is never a waste, the scenery is so beautiful.
And this evening, it rained again!
Today was a good day!
Started out with cereal for breakfast, AND doing laundry – yeah, nothing exciting there. BUT – soon enough, the chores were done and it was time to ride! Went to a place called Storm Mountain, that has a few different loops. We took the easy one, called the “Coon Hollow Loop”. Most of it was intermediate technical, which means I had to dismount a few times (all voluntary, today – not so much other rides), but not bad at all. About 8 miles, all well worth doing. Ok, maybe not the monster uphill I had to hike the bike to the top of, but all the rest was fine.
After the ride, I thought “Hey, Mount Rushmore is only about 12 miles or so away, let’s go see it!”. And so we did. Here are a couple of photos I took:
Kind of small, so I took another:
I like the storm clouds! We even got a little rain …
This was a cool tunnel on the drive up there:
After that, it was shower time and go to lunch (we get a better reception if we don’t show up still stinky from the ride!). This was another suggestion from Jaralei, Murphy’s. GREAT food! I had the Buffalo meatloaf sandwich. Mmmmmmm – Good! Barri had a Tomato Mozzarella salad, also really good. This is Murphy’s:
After lunch, we decided to go see the Crazy Horse Memorial.
Here is a photo of that:
It’s a shame it’s taking so long to complete. At this rate, it will be 50 years or more before it’s finished, and none of us here now will be able to see it finished! Bummer.
After that, it was dinner at the Longhorn Steakhouse, where I had the Outlaw Ribeye – 18 oz, and a loaded baked potato. I’m going to go sleep it off now …
Today, we go to the Badlands! A bit over an hour to get there, but once there, some fascinating geology. We poked around a few places, looked over some overlooks – the terrain is all (almost! You’ll see later) pretty similar, and I got some shots, like these. Here’s a sweeping view:
This was close to where we came in, on the North and East end of the park.
How about another?
Pretty cool, huh? What next?
Lunch! That sounds good before we continue! There is a place called Badlands Lodge, and they have a restaurant, so we decided to try some of the local fare. Buffalo burgers! Yup, had to try that. They taste just like chicken! No, not really. But it DOES taste a lot like beef, which should be no surprise. Mighty tasty, and we had a good waitress with a sense of humor.
We decided the next thing to do was to hike into the Badlands, so we put on our Camelbacks and trekked off into the heat. We started our hike at noon, and according to Weatherbug, it was 101F – didn’t feel like it, but it was pretty warm. We did a five mile hike (two out, two back, and about another mile on various areas at the beginning and at the far end). Here is the trail head where we started:
Yes, we really are going to go out into that!
Here is another shot along the way:
And another, this one with The Bear out front, leading the pack:
This is almost back to the beginning:
And here’s a shot of me, two cameras, of course! Had to have my 28-300 on the full-frame, and then my fisheye for those sweeping panoramas:
Yes, we went WAaaay back out there, then returned. Nice hike!
Oh, yeah – at the far end, these two guys showed up. Look like deer, but with curved horns like a ram:
Here’s a closeup of one of them:
Ok, onward!
Next, we get to some REALLY interestingly colored hills:
And this one:
Unfortunately, it’s hard to do justice to a panorama here, but if you click on the pano, it will blow it up for you, then you can easily return with the back button.
Alright, we’re gonna ride today! But first things first – BREAKFAST! Last night was so good, we’ll go see the gal from the bike shop at her second job, as a waitress, at Bully Blends. Well, she comes in later, but we left word to thank her for pointing us to such good places to eat. This place? I had eggs and bacon, with three pancakes. Well, the eggs were PERFECT (over medium, thank-you-very-much), bacon THICK and crisp, and the pancakes. Oh LORDY, these things are the size of dinner plates! I could not finish them, sorry to say. GREAT breakfast!
Oh yeah, the place is Bully Blends, here:
Then, of course, the ride. We decided to keep it close by, so went to the local park to ride “M Hill”. After a false start, we got on the right track, which seemed to be STRAIGHT UP. I was not built for this! My puny flatlander lungs were screaming at me, and we hadn’t gone a quarter mile! Well, after that nice warmup, they actually decided to give in, and the rest of the ride went very well. Why “M Hill”? I wondered that too, but it’s because the hill has a huge “M” on its side, close to the top, with an “S” on the left, and a “D” on the right (both of those smaller than the “M”). I realized it was because of the school in town! I was about to ask one of the locals if Marcel Marceau had ever been a guest lecturer, when It dawned on me this is the South Dakota School of MINES, not mimes. Ooops. Mea Culpa.
On the way down, we got a little lost, did a little trespassing – no one called us on it, so I guess we got away with it. Good ride! Not very long, but we didn’t want to re-injure The Bear’s right paw.
So, what to do in the afternoon? Go to Sturgis! Bike week is coming up, first full week in August, so we just had to stop by. Of course, we had to go by the Harley dealership and get some T-shirts and a cap:
And after that, of course, we had to grab a beer somewhere. One-Eyed Jack’s looked pretty good, so we went in, The Bear had a JD and Coke, and I had a Guinness on tap, and we hoisted our glasses and made a toast to our neighbor Dave, who, sadly, died two weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Dave nearly as well as I wish I had, but I do know he had a Harley that he liked and rode a lot. I don’t know if he ever got to Sturgis, but I do know if he had not yet got there, he’ll be there next month, at least in spirit.
While there, I got a chance to pose with another Bear:
I hope this is as close as I get to a grizzly on this trip (or any other trip, for that matter).
After all this, back to town, dinner at home, and update the blog (somewhat). I found out it’s a lot of work to keep a blog up to date, but it’s worth it for my friends!
Oh, yeah – almost forgot! Since we were out this way, well, we HAD to visit Deadwood. I wish I’d skipped it. One of my favorite TV serieseses is “Deadwood”. It has some really hilarious moments in it, and the people for the most part seem to have been portrayed the way they probably really were – rather coarse, of course. And modern Deadwood I suppose has kept true to its roots – it is a gambling – excuse me, GAMING (I guess they want to make it sound better) – town. And I have no use for gaming/gambling, so it was pretty much a waste. I had hoped they would have kept some of the original (or at least original-style) buildings, but even the architecture for the most art was a bust. Oh, well, lesson learned.
Ah, another travel day! Broke camp early, because it’s going to be a long drive – 362 miles, according to the Map App. There is some beautiful countryside in this part of the world – lots of rolling hills, and when you get to South Dakota, they even have good-sized trees on them!
On the way, we fueled up in Oshkosh, b’gosh! There’s a Cabela’s something or another there, too. Not a store, and not a distribution center from the look of it.
A bit further on, we stopped at Carhenge! Different. I’d been to the row of cars outside of Amarillo called Cadillac Ranch, but this is actually a recreation of the real Stonehenge, with the cars allegedly placed the way the stones are in the real Stonehenge.
Here are some photos. This is a close-up:
This one is the whole thing, as you walk up on it:
And this one is another partial I thought was creative:
After this, it was time for lunch, and we stopped at a place called Sam & Louie’s, a New York style Pizzeria. On a whim, I decided to try their Sam’s Stromboli, made with Italian sausage, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, red onion, mushrooms, green bell pepper, and mozzarella cheese. VERY good! I only mention it because it easily makes second-best for Strombolis I’ve tried. My all-time favorite is Sal’s, either in Dallas or Plano. It took the Plano location a while to get it right, but now they’re every bit as good as the original. GREAT Stromboli.
Upon leaving S&L’s, I saw this:
And thought “Wow! I thought only Colorado and Washington had legalized it!”. Then I realized they meant beer. Not quite so progressive, these Nebraskans.
We arrived at the KOA, dropped the trailer, and headed for a local bike shop. We spoke to a very nice young lass, who was quite full of good information – not only about the local trails, but the local eateries as well. She mentioned some of the trails we already knew about, so we knew it was good info, and after eating at one of her recommended places, she knows good food, too. We’ll be seeing her for breakfast, at her second job as waitress – another good place to eat. I can’t wait! Good food and bicycles – does life get any better? You do a lot of one so you can do a lot of the other. Or, if you do a lot of one, you have to do a lot of the other. Either way works.
BTW, the bike shop is Black Hills Bicycles, here:
Dinner was at Everest – Indian and Nepalese cuisine. I had the hot Lamb Curry, and The Bear had some chicken dish. Both were delicious. I also had the Mango Lassi, which was to die for, even if it’s named after a dog – go figure, those foreigners and the things they call their food! (Just kidding! Nobody get their shorts in a knot!)
We have wi-fi, at the trailer! Woohoo! It’s been a long day, so the photos will get done tomorrow. At least I know they will get done. But first, we ride!
Sunday! Today, we ride! It was a short ride, but it was fun. Barri’s arm is still hurt, but yesterday we went by a Walgreens and she got a carpal tunnel brace, and that seems to help keep it from getting worse. Cool!
So, the ride today is Potter’s Pasture, just outside of Brady, NE. We decide to do the easy Green loop, since The Bear is injured still. Yup, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it! We got to do a little bit of trail maintenance in the form of signage repair -someone had removed a marker for the green trail, it was undamaged, and its screw still on the post, so I removed the screw and put the little tag back where it belonged. And, in the spirit of “no good deed goes unpunished” there is another place further in the trail where there is no marking for the green trail and we end up on “Potter’s Plunge”, but backwards, so I climb this MONSTER hill, bike in tow, which Barri cannot climb, and it’s obviously the wrong way anyway, so I climb back down, bike in tow. Ah, well, I’m the fitter for it!
So we finish the ride, feeling good, and all is well! I actually remembered to shoot some video today, which I will post … one of these days.
Tomorrow, we head for South Dakota!