On The Road Summer 2021
We are into our first week of the grand summer road trip. The Princess and I look forward to this for months starting when the last summer trip ended. We stayed close to home last summer so for this trip, we have been waiting almost two years. We bought a new travel trailer, an Outdoors RV, in the fall of 2019. We have taken it out for a week here and there but not enough to get comfortable with where everything is stored or just knowing when all of the essentials are pack. The familiarity will come in a couple of weeks on the road. For now, we are just enjoying heading down the road.
The first destination was The Black Hills of South Dakota. I had read about the George S. Mickelson bike trail that runs from Deadwood, 109 miles to Edgemont, SD. The trail follows the rail bed of an abandoned line of the Burlington Northern Railroad originally built to serve the mining communities in the Black Hills. We stayed a few nights south of Deadwood in a commercial campground, Creekside RV Park. (Before you consider staying there, you should read our review in Campendium) The campground was a major disappointment but the access to the trail was spot on.
The first day on the trail we choose a 26-mile out and back section based on descriptions we had read. From Rochford going south, the trail dropped about 1000 feet in the first six miles the gained a little more than 1000 feet in the next seven miles. Doesn’t sound too bad but the last bit of the climb was 7%. I thought my heart might explode as the Princess dropped me on that last mile before the turnaround point. She said she didn’t mean to but I am sure she was thinking about the life insurance she could collect if she pushed me a little harder. Despite her trying to do me harm, I was really impressed with her riding.
On day two we woke up to temperatures in the 40’s and light rain so we decided to check out more of the area. The trip research highlighted the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway. Turns out it was beautiful, maybe a 20-mile dive with steep rock walls and waterfalls. Upon entering the narrow canyon, we quickly came in contact with a fun run with over 300 participants enjoying the same scenic drive and they thought it was good idea to run in the middle of the road towards the truck instead of the 5-foot paved shoulder. OK, I must admit here that I really am an old grouch. I was annoyed that a 125-pound woman wanted to play chicken with my 2000-pound truck. I stopped, she won. She probably cut off 15 inches of the six-mile run by leaving the shoulder.
Later we stopped in The High Plains Western Heritage Museum in Spearfish. This is a very impressive museum started by 2 ranchers in the 1950’s. They have a tremendous collection of historic saddles and examples of carriages and wagons. We have been trying to stop into museums on our travels and never seem too disappointed.
With this being our last day in the area we wanted to get one more ride on the Mickelson Trail. The section we chose this time had the same elevation gains but a much more reasonable slope. The trail traversed lush ranchland with a backdrop of forested mountains and a blue sky. We only road 20 miles but it was so much fun. It made up for the terribly hard ride the day before.
Next stop, Montana.
Dennis
