Mickelson Bike Trail, Crazy Horse & Rapid City Statues

One of the reasons I wanted to stay at the Rafter J Bar Ranch is that the Mickelson Bike Trail ran right beside it.  The Mickelson Bike Trail is a 110 mile long rail trail than runs from Deadwood to down past Custer. 

This was the first bike trail we had ever seen that charged a user fee of $3 per day...walking or biking.  On Tuesday, I talked Chuck into our riding our bikes south on the trail towards the Crazy Horse monument.  I decided to head towards this direction because I knew it would be uphill on the way out meaning we would be riding downhill most of the way back.

The trail was hard-packed with small gravel. 

 

  There were several wooden (and very rough) bridges that we crossed.

 

And we followed a stream much of the way.

 

Like all the Black Hills, the views were great.

 

After peddling nearly 6 1/2 miles up a gradual slope, we finally reached Crazy Horse.

 

When the Crazy Horse statue is complete, Crazy Horse will appear riding a horse but it is unknown when it will ever be completed because the construction is not very well funded only receiving money from donations and entrance fees to the Crazy Horse memorial.

 

 

When it is complete, it is supposed to be the biggest sculptures in the world.

 



After resting for a few minutes, we headed back down toward Rafter J on a very pleasant downhill ride.  We barely had to peddle at all.  The hardest part was peddling back up the hill at the campground.

Later that afternoon, we drove into Rapid City to see statues of the presidents on the street corners that Ron and Brenda had told us about.

We saw Franklin Roosevelt,

 

Abraham Lincoln,

 

Teddy Roosevelt,

 

Harry Truman (my dad's favorite),

 

Bill Clinton,

 

Thomas Jefferson,

 

George Washington,

 

Ronald Reagan,

 

George W. Bush,

 

and many others.

As we left, we saw a dinosaur on top of the hill behind Rapid City...

 

and this weird-looking creature at the Dairy Twist.

 

(It was actually a piece of wood lying next to the building.)

Then, we headed back home and enjoyed one more nice night at Rafter J Bar Ranch.

 

 

 

 

Hot dogs and new friends

On Memorial Day, our RV neighbors in the park, Ron & Brenda and David & Helen from Texas, invited us over for hot dogs.  It started raining with a little bit of dime-size hail right before Ron finished grilling the hot dogs.  So the "cookout" was moved indoors to Ron and Brenda's motorhome.

As we have said before, probably the best thing about RVing is the people you meet and Ron & Brenda and David & Helen were no exception.  We enjoyed talking with them and learning a little more about Texas and where to visit whenever we travel to Texas. 

When David walked outside after it stopped raining, he called back inside and told us to come look at the clouds in the sky.

It was so weird-looking.  They looked like big giant cloud-drops...sort of like a drip of water when it is about to drip out of a water faucet.  Only these were huge cloud-drops looking like they were about to drop out of the sky.

We were all taking pictures of the clouds because we had not seen anything quite like it.

Later that evening, I captured these sunset pictures.

Nice view, wouldn't you agree?

 

 

A little hiking in the Black Hills

On Memorial Day, Chuck suggested we check out some of the hiking trails in Custer State Park.  We were looking for rather short trails (less than 2 miles) and preferably a loop.  We decided to try the "moderate" Stockade Lake trail that was a 1.5 mile loop.

The park's efforts at curbing the spread of the pine beetle infestation was evident immediately.

 

The trail was well-marked with these blue diamonds marking the direction.

 

You could see Stockade Lake at various points along the trail.

Chuck let me take the lead which I enjoyed because I liked looking for the little blue diamond markers to follow. 

 

The first half of the trail was up, up, up.

 

There was not very much undergrowth here like you see in the Smokies; but there was the occasional wildflower here and there.

It was so sad to see all the trees that had been cut to try to stop the pine beetle infestation.

 

At one point on the trail, we looked out and realized that we could see the Cathedral Spires way off in the distance.

 

We headed back down the trail toward Stockade Lake...

...and before we knew it, we had finished the hike.

 

Since the hike didn't take that long to do, we decided to look for another relative short and easy trail to hike.  We drove to Badger Hole and hiked the Badger Clark Historic Trail that was 7/10 of a mile long.

 

It was rated "moderate" but we rated it "easy."

Badger Clark was South Dakota's first poet laureate and he lived in a cabin here where Custer State Park is now located. 

 

There were historical markers along the trail telling about Badger Clark.  Have you ever heard of "The Cowboy's Prayer"?  If you have ever read it, the author was probably listed as "unknown" or "anonymous"; but it was Badger Clark that wrote it.  In fact, many writers copied his work, but Badger just accepted it as a compliment that anyone would want to copy his work.  He lived in this cabin for 20 years until his death with no running water or indoor plumbing and did not own a car or even a horse.  He had to walk about 300 yards down to a stream to get water.  He walked everywhere he went or got a ride whenever he needed to go into town.

Living in the middle of the serene and beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota surely provided much of the inspiration for his poetry.

 

 

 

 

 

Needles Highway

When we were in Mitchell, South Dakota, we stopped at a Cabela's to look at spotting scopes.  The sales clerk was extremely helpful but basically talked us out of buying a spotting scope saying a good set of binoculars is better for viewing wildlife and we already have those.  When we told him we were headed to the Black Hills area, he recommended that we take a couple of drives:   Needles Highway and Spearfish Canyon. 

After walking Saturday morning around the campground, we decided to pack a picnic lunch and take a day trip down the Needles Highway.  We had never heard of it and so we really didn't know what to expect.

As we started the drive, we saw some interesting rock formations...

 

...and a lot more dead Ponderosa pines.

 

We thought the rock formation on the right looks like a BIG set of toes.

 

As we went a little further down the road, we saw this guy sitting way up on top of a rock.

He had just finished climbing that rock and was holding the rope while the next guy climbed up.

We parked there for a few minutes and watched the last guy climb up to the top.

After watching the rock climbers, we drove further up the road towards The Needles.  We had no idea what to expect, but they were magnificent.

This formation was called "The Needles Eye."

Appropriately named, wouldn't you agree?

 

We were surrounded by these beautiful "needles" and other rock formations.

 

 

These rock formations or "needles" were huge.  Can you see Chuck standing in front of this one?

 

 

 



In between and underneath these "needles" was the tunnel we were going to have to drive through to get to the other side.

 

But first, this car pulling a little camper had to very, very carefully make its way through.

The driver's wife walked behind the camper making sure he didn't get too close to the sides.  (I would have been walking behind the camper too because I would be afraid we would get stuck inside the tunnel!)

Now, it was our turn...

After we drove through the tunnel, we came to another pull-off where there were some people feeding tortilla chips to the chipmunks.

 

Feeding Alvin and his brothers is not something I care to do, so I just took a movie of them.

From the overlook, we could see the tunnel we had just driven through...

 

...and the other side of the Needles.

As we continued down the Needles Highway, we saw more rock towers or Needles.

They kind of looked like stalacmites like what you would see inside the floor of a cave.

 

As we traveled further, we could see the Cathedral Spires.

We saw another rock climber scaling one of the Spires.

There were other pull-offs where we could look back at other views of the Cathedral Spires.

At the end of the Needles Highway, we turned down Playhouse Road and Chuck spotted these deer.

We pulled into the picnic area at Center Lake, and found a perfect spot for our picnic.

WOW!  What a day!  Chuck and I agreed Needles Highway is way up there on our list of "most impressive things" we have seen since we have been full-timing.