106 miles

After putting nearly 1000 miles on the motorcycles with Dad in four days at the end of June, I headed back up towards the Black Hills over the July 4th weekend with Melissa and Willa, this time with un-motorized two-wheelers.  Over two days, we put 106 miles on our bicycles, riding the Mickelson Rails-to-Trails path from Deadwood to Edgemont.

I'll admit, I was pretty worried that my butt wouldn't hold up to two days in the saddle.  After that 11ish miles out to the Laramie airport earlier this spring, I hadn't been out for a real ride since.  And I think the longest ride I'd ever ever done, prior to the Mickelson ride, was certainly no more than 25 miles.

I survived, and all in all the ride was awesome.  Day 1 was a mix of up- and downhill, and a couple of long pulls out of Englewood and Mystic kicked my ass.  We stopped in Hill City for dinner (buffalo burgers at The Diner), then rode a few more miles before finding a camping spot for our tents.  Day 2 was a mostly downhill ride into Custer, where Willa and I had a pastry and some coffee, and then we all waited around for an hour or so while a rainstorm passed through.  Once the heaviest rain let up, we put on our raincoats and rode two hours through a steady, cool drizzle to Pringle.  After lunch there, we came out of the cafe to discover that the rain had stopped, which meant an entirely comfortable, scenic, downhill ride for the last 30 miles.  Here are a few photos from the Big Ride:

Here's me, at the Deadwood Trailhead, looking pretty fresh and giddy.  I'm excited!

Here's a picture of us at Milepost 100, after a pretty steep alternate route that cut off a couple of miles through Lead, SD.  Yep, that's a trailer behind Melissa's bike, just for her dog Zelda.

Here's a pic of one of the four cool tunnels we rode through on our journey.

Clouds looming over Hill City when we stopped for dinner on Day 1.

Setting up camp south of Hill City.  My little tent held up splendidly.

Lemonade and beer makes for a completely wonderful end-of-day drink.

Here's a stupid telephone pole messing up my picture of Melissa and Willa in front of Crazy Horse Monument.

A black-and-white of Sheep Canyon, at the south end of the trail.  This area turned out to be my favorite, surprisingly.  I bet it's not so spectacular a few weeks later into the summer, when the temps are hotter and the scenery is drier.  I was thankful for cool cloud cover at the end of Day 2.

At the finish!  We did it!