Friday, June 18, 2010

Exploring the Black Hills of Dakota

Our first stop this morning was about 200 metres from our motel at the Safeway supermarket. We needed more teabags and more batteries for our camera. We have been taking anything from 150 to 350 photos in a day, which pretty much burns out a set of 4 AA alkaline cells every day. Just as well we are not using film!

We set our GPS to take us on a road through the Spearfish Canyon. Since it is set to calculate the shortest route (as opposed to fastest), it has taken us down some weird "shortcuts". Today it took us into a cemetery, the dead centre of Spearfish, you could say. (I can;t believe I just said that) Unfortunately, what the GPS thought was a road out was blocked by a locked gate so we ended up backtracking to the main road.

Spearfish Canyon is pretty enough, but doesn't have me searching for superlatives.

The road eventually lead to Lead, Central City and Deadwood. Deadwood's main claim to fame seems to be that Jame Butler Hickok, known to his mates as Wild Bill, was killed here, and that Calamity Jane is buried in the same cemetery. The main street of the town has many red brick buildings that look to date from the early 1900s that give it real character.

Unfortunately, the character of the street is sullied in that almost every doorway leads to either a souvenir shop (aka "Trading Post"), a T shirt store, or a poker machine filled Casino. Every parking space in town is metered. This is a town cashing in on its past as hard as it can, and not of much interest to us.

Route 385 led south to Hill City. This is another town with character - tourist oriented certainly, but without any swagger of self-importance. We stopped here for lunch  and then rode out on a narrow and twisty road through Keystone to Mount Rushmore.

We spent some time here taking a very worthwhile guided walk, and dropping in to the studio of the sculptor, Gutzon Borghlum.

From there we took of to find the Iron Mountain Road. This is the craziest road I have ever ridden! Narrow, and with almost every corner posted with 15, 20 or 25 mph advisory speeds, it tracked up to the top of the mountain. What was most unusual were the three corkscrews, where the road would take a tight full circle and loop back over itself across a timber trestle bridge as it struggled to gain altitude in the fastest way possible.

Along the road to the top are a number of low, narrow single lane tunnels to add to the interest. The continuation of the road down the back of the mountain was equally twisting and slow.

Along the way we were further slowed by a huge herd of buffalo.

We turned west on route 16a to Custer and from there turned north to visit the Crazy Horse Memorial. This is another carving using a mountain as the raw material. Started in 1948, it is still a long way from being finished. This may be in part because it is being done entirely with private funding, but most likely because of its sheer scale: all four heads of Mt Rushmore would fit into Crazy Horse's head, and that's only a small part of the sculpture.


It was getting late as we left Crazy Horse, so we booked into a cabin on the outskirts of nearby Hill City. We rode into town and had buffalo steak for dinner at the Bumpin' Buffalo Bar and Grill.

Ummm! That was bloody good!

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