Monday Day 4 - Sylvan to Custer

What a beautiful day! 70 degrees and sunny, although a bit breezy. Our first stop was the Needles Eye, a part of the Cathedral Spires by Sylvan Lake. A tunnel leads through the granite to the Eye, and we had a lot of fun taking pictures and talking to the other tourists there. Through the tunnel, a marmot just sat in the sun and posed for Georgia and me so we could take his picture! The viewpoint was simply spectacular - the top of the world! We got a tourist to take our picture with Dusty's recumbent, with its flag waving in the breeze. After a very quick ride down the mountain from Sylvan to Custer, we had lunch at the Sage Creek Grill with Ron and John (Dusty's husband) with chocolate from the candy store for dessert. Yum! Next we checked out the National Woodcarving Museum. I was impressed with the carving pictured - sometimes the wind really does blow that way here! Hope it doesn't tomorrow though! Oh and I got a pinch flat 1/2 mile away from the truck. We only biked about 13 miles today, a good "Team Turtle" day.

Sunday Day 3 - Rest Day

We stayed at Sylvan Lake today and hiked up to Harney Peak, the first tall mountain west of the Pyranees but it was a very relaxed hike. Always such a beautiful place. Then I made a fire and we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows - truly a great rest day!

Saturday's Ride

On Saturday we biked from Custer State Park Game Lodge Up the Iron Mountain Road, Up to Mount Rushmore, and then Up to Sylvan Lake (there were only a few "downs" that day!) Gorgeous scenery, lots of wildlife sightings again, and I always get a kick out of us talking to the tourists! It was 36 miles of the heart of the Black Hills. I pooped out at mile 33 - not too bad for a gal on a comfort bike! We stopped at breakfast at a restaurant on the Iron Mountain Road that had very good, cheap food and listened to the tourist with the big Swiss Horn - he travels with that in his camper! We toiled up the Iron Mountain (named after the Iron Man Triathlon maybe??) and the view from the top was simply breathtaking. The road to Mount Rushmore had one lane closed for road construction, but there wasn't anyone constructing, so we took it - and it was awesome to have it all to ourselves! I walked up to Mt. Rushmore since it was so steep (car brakes smell like rubber here all the time) and pretty much kept up with the others who were biking! The last picture here is of Karen V, the birthday girl - she was sung to all day long, it was such a hoot! At the restaurant in the morning, everyone in the restaurant sang - so funny! Best wishes to you Karen, you're my inspiration! A wonderful challenging day and I'm so glad I was able to accomplish it!

Friday, continued

Here are a few more pictures I didn't get uploaded for Friday. Also, we biked 47 miles that day - from Hot Springs to Wind Cave, then to Custer State Park through the Wildlife Loop to the State Game Lodge, where the ladies stayed in a cabin. Bikers are Sue and Dusty from Hot Springs, Karen V from Minnesota, Georgia from Virginia, and Karen M from Hot Springs will join us for the Mickelson Trail part of the ride. Go Team Turtle!

Team Turtle Bike Ride - Friday, Day 1

Our ride from Hot Springs to Spearfish and back started today, something I've been training for all summer. Today started out bright and sunny. We started out about 8:30 after we took our obligatory pictures. Dusty named us Team Turtle, so we made bright circles with turtles on them so drivers can see us. As soon as I got past downtown Hot Springs my rear bike tire exploded, with a big tear in the tire! So Dusty biked over to the hardware store, got me a new tire and tube, and one hour later we were on the road again! Our goal was to tour Wind Cave at 11 a.m. but we missed that, so got on the 12 o'clock tour which was awesome - our tour guide was extremely well spoken and informed! So we were on the road again by 2 p.m. - and saw lots and lots of prairie dogs and antelope (not too many buffalo, thank goodness!) The day was hot, we had a headwind, and there were plenty of hills to test our mettle! So we arrived in Custer State Park Game Lodge at 7:30 p.m., after a long hard afternoon. Here are pictures I took from today - no fancy stuff, I'm tired and ready for my bed!

Biking and Hiking

I'm still biking! A week or so ago I got my friends Dusty and Karen to bike with me from Pringle to Edgemont on the Mickelson Trail, a rails to trails route, approximately 30 miles. Karen posed for me so I could get the camera set up on the bench for our group photo on the trail. It was a beautiful day! The rancher had his hay all baled up along our route and we breezed into Edgemont with nary a flat or problem at all! I am getting excited for the big bike ride -350 miles - we start the end of August!

The next group of pictures is from an amazing adventure Ron and I had last Friday. We decided to prospect for gold at a new claim that our club has just gotten, south of Spearfish in Beaver Creek. This is really wild country and we knew we would have to hike down a pretty steep hill to the creek below. So I studied the topo maps, located our target area on the GPS, and decided to hike in where a tributary ran into the stream, thinking that it wouldn't be so steep if we could stay in that draw. I brought lunch, a gold pan, classifer, garden scoop and hooked screwdriver, thinking that I could get gold flakes out of bedrock cracks and pan it out. Ron brought his metal detector because we had heard this place is known for nuggets in the bedrock. We parked the truck at the top of the hill and found an abandoned road that looked like it paralleled the tributary. We started hiking but things went south as soon as the road petered out. The tributary had so many tangled bushes and fallen trees that it was impassible and we decided to hike across the steep hillside which also was covered with fallen trees and poison ivy. When we reached the bottom, there was no water! I took a couple of pictures of where we were, tuned up the GPS and figured out where we were, and sure enough we were in the stream but no water! So Ron metal detected and I dug some dirt out of the bedrock where he was finding targets and put it into big baggies and into my backpack, to pan out when I got home. The clouds started gathering, so we decided to start hiking out around 1 pm - all of Ron's targets were just junk, no gold, but he hadn't even gotten a good start. The hillside was so steep that I was hanging on to bushes and tree trunks to pull myself up the hill - 700 feet of that, I found out later! I couldn't find the faint road we took earlier, so using the GPS we bushwacked through the forest out to the main road. I think if I hadn't marked the truck's coordinates on the GPS, we'd still be wandering around in the forest . . . . As soon as I washed off the poison ivy oil from my legs (I was dumb and wore shorts) it started thundering and sprinkling rain. So we got out just in time - by the time we drove through Sturgis, this was a huge thunderstorm right behind us and hammered the motorcyclists with egg-sized hail balls, although we missed it because we turned south to go to Rapid City. So I panned out my two nice sized flakes of gold and am still doctoring my poison ivy rash by rubbing it with salt - a remedy I learned from a ranger in California where they fight poison oak! Oh for a good soak in the ocean! Ron says he wants to go back next year, but I am going to find an easier way in, for sure!