Black Hills Part 2: Badlands and Hot Springs
Trip Start
Nov 22, 2007
1
50
55
Trip End
Dec 01, 2008
Hot Springs,
South Dakota,
United States
Friday, September 12, 2008
After miles of prairie, the landscape changes to dry, hard, cracked earth; baked so long in the sun that the ground looks almost like shards of dusty glass, and it crunches underfoot
001 bikes at the entrance
. Then the cliffs and jutting rocks of the Badlands come into view. It really looks otherworldly. A barren, dry land; a curiosity brimming with intrinsic beauty, different from anywhere that we humans usually associate with life. This would be a great place to camp for night sky uninterrupted, since there is really nothing around. If we were to come back, we would camp to enjoy the stars. We put a couple hundred miles on the bikes that day, up to and through the Badlands, to the highway through Wall-stopping at the world famous Wall Drug-and to circle back on Route 16. All in all a couple hundred miles. I need a better seat on my bike. . . . :)We moved on to Hot Springs-the very southern end of the Black Hills area. We found a fantastic place to dry camp-Cold Brook Reservoir, an Army Corps of Engineers campground right on a lake. This was the perfect spot for our trips to Wind Cave National Park and to the southern end of Custer State Park, as well as our visits to the town of Hot Springs. We took an underground tour at Wind Cave-this cave has more boxwork-a unique type of cave formation-than any other cave, and has hundreds of miles of trails. We also visited the Mammoth Site-a huge indoor archeological excavation that has uncovered the fossils of 55 mammoths and other creatures that fell into a sinkhole and became trapped 26,000 years ago. The site was discovered by a developer when groundbreaking a new housing development
002 prairie dog
. Apparently his son who was studying paleontology saw the bones, and asked his father to stop progress until his professor could see them. They turned out to be wooly mammoth bones! The developer decided to donate the site and the dig began. A complex with museum and gift shop was built around it, and they are still finding bones! About 15 miles outside of Hot Springs is the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, where wild horses run free across the prairies. You can adopt a horse from the sanctuary for $650 and up. Unfortunately, we don't have room in the RV. . . !The Cold Brook Reservoir was a great place to hike, fish, and stargaze. We could see the Milky Way most nights and were there during the full moon, which bathed the lake in a mystical light. Each morning, we watched the osprey and the king fishers hunt as the mist rose up from the lake surface. Bob started feeding a couple of ducks soon after we set up camp. By the end of the week, he went from the two ducks to 20 ducks. They would show up every morning making noise to wake us up-ready for breakfast! Bob caught a couple rainbow trout and a small bass. We hiked around the reservoir canyon and along the rocky ledges in the evenings. If life could be this simple always, this would be a place to spend it. The weather was beautiful, the people were friendly, and we hated to leave.
We really enjoyed the whole Black Hills area. It has lots of great scenic drives and motorcycle rides. Keystone is a fun town to visit for shopping and checking out Mt. Rushmore. Hill City's Main Street has good restaurants and little shops with souvenirs and local art, Deadwood is a must see for the old west town feel, the shootouts, and the gambling. And Custer State Park is really a phenomenal place-a state park with a national park feel to it-buffalo, deer, burros, and birds galore with a changing landscape. Southern Black Hills has a lot to offer with Wind Cave, Hot Springs, a more temperate climate than other nearby areas, and some beautiful countryside.
