The Black Hills, part deux

Okay, folks, it's been three days and we are about to leave the Black Hills and it had better be time to blog again. We have had a spectacular time here in South Dakota. It was supposed to rain/thunderstorm every single day but we have never once had our plans ruined/changed by the weather. Except that when last we met, I was cooking in the middle of a thunderboomer.

Jewel Cave's spot-on impression of jellyfish

Monday, July 6 we were exhausted with rubbery legs from our not-too-long-but-really-intense hike in Sunday Gulch. So we went to Jewel Cave (New NPS stamp!) for the standard tour. But there was a three-hour wait, so we drove back into the town of Custer for lunch at Black Hills Burger and Bun. I was super excited about this, because Fox News had rated it as the #2 burger place in America. And if there's only one thing I know in this world, it's that you can always trust Fox News as a reliable source of unbiased information. But despite that, it was really, really good. And believe me when I say I have abnormally high standards for burgers.

I'm sure Jewel Cave was really very interesting with the caves and the limestone and the stalactites and the claustrophobia. But, you know, the burgers.

I'm also 99% certain we did something really super-interesting on Monday after Jewel Cave but, for the life of me, I can't remember what it was.

But I do remember that Tuesday, July 7 we hiked up to Cathedral Spires. It was awesome. A moderately significant climb with no great pay-off at the end except for a trail sign saying “End of Trail”. (Implication: Turn around before you walk off of the cliff, dummy.) But it was fantastic, walking through the midst of all of the cliffs and canyon and spires. Kieran and especially New SpiderGirl Izzie climbed all over every rock there was to climb.

A striking resemblance to greatness

After that we went to Mount Rushmore, the only national park in America with a parking garage like an airport, and where admission to the park is free but you have to pay $11 to park there. It feels rather like DisneyWorld (I don't mean that as a compliment) and, of course, there are nearly as many people at Mount Rushmore as there are at DisneyWorld. Yes, you get to take in the museum about how awesome America is. Yes, it was cool to see the MASSIVE compressor that ran all of their jackhammers. And good on them for not having hundreds of workers die in the construction, like they would have if they were getting ready for FIFA. Everybody else in the famiglia loooooooooooooooves Mount Rushmore, so who am I to complain? Just the guy with the laptop and the blog address. Alls I'm saying is it would have been sooooooooo much better if Nicolas Cage had shown up and shown us the city of gold.

That evening, after eating WAY too much pasta, I decided to do what I had planned to do every evening since we arrived, which is ride the 7 miles and 1,500 feet of elevation from our campground to the Crazy Horse monument.

#1) I am so out of shape.

#2) But the 24 mph downhilll is totally worth it.

#3) Until getting a flat tire a mile from our campsite, after dark.

#4) In mountain lion country.

(Editor's note: Author was not eaten.)

Wednesday, July 8, we went on an extended drive to the Spearfish Canyon in the northern end of the Black Hills. Bonus: We stopped at Cabela's on the way there. For those of you who have never been to Cabela's, imagine the greatest outdoors store you've ever been too. Now multiply it times 5, and give it a 50-foot-tall roof. Now, go and shoot like 300 animals, and place them strategically around the store. On the upside, they had an iron skillet that was two feet in diameter, and affordably priced, too. I was totally covetous of it. I didn't care what anybody was going to saying about compensating. I was all set to buy one, but then I realized I couldn't actually lift it. Sadly, when the employees saw what a girly-man I was, they had no choice but to shoot me and place me in a diorama.

I've been to the Black Hills a bunch of times before, and Spearfish Canyon was unlike anything I/we have seen here in the southern part/Custer S.P. ever before. Some sections from Dances With Wolves were shot there (really just about the whole movie was shot in western SD), and I just kept seeing Wind In His Hair on the bluff above me as we hiked, telling me that I would always, always be his friend. It was quite touching, really.

That band of Sioux in Dances With Wolves seemed like such nice people. Even though the ending was kind of vague, I'm sure they solved all of their problems with the government and everything turned out okay for them in the end.

Kieran found an abandoned mine!
And what could be more fun than playing in an abandoned mine?!?

Some of our tour members who don't enjoy hiking as much as the rest (cough, cough, Kieran) were worried about the number [5] of hikes we were trying to cram into one day in Spearfish. But we tried to hike Devil's Bathtub (not that one, the other one) but there was no parking. And then the other one was closed. And then... And at the end of it, well, we had only two heuuuuu-jah hikes for a grand total of 3.5 miles. But it was gorge-ous. (You see what I did there, right?) Waterfalls, canyons, flowers, etc. At the end of it Jerry and Kathy offered to buy dinner, so we stopped in Hill City for “Western cowboy fare” at Desperado. The place was filled with Eagles, but they just wouldn't come to their senses. (Age check. If you don't get that joke, you can probably still climb a flight of stairs without getting winded. And I hate you for it.)

Tonight we watched our first TV/movie of the trip with the kids, and tomorrow we move through Wyoming and Devil's Tower to Hardin, MT, a little town where I had some good times back in the day.