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| The Needles area of the Black Hills |
A group of us went "off route" on our way from Hill City to Rapid City, SD. Myles knew about a ride up to the Needles area of the Black Hill where there are some really neat rock formations and some tunnels carved through the rock. I plotted out the course on Ride With GPS and distributed it to the group. It added about 15 miles to our ride, but it was well worth it. The rock formations in the area are really interesting. The tour company isn't overly excited about us doing this and won't support us, but we are all experienced riders and with a group of 5 there wasn't much to worry about.
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| Needles Eye Tunnel |
The next few days were a mix of thunderstorms at night and heavy cross winds during the day. It made for some tough rides ranging from 58-75 miles long.
One of the most interesting of these was riding into Interior, SD. It had been a pretty hard ride of 75 miles with 15-20 mile per hour cross winds and a group of us had stopped at Lulu's Bar in Interior (pop about 80) for a beer before heading to our campsite at the local KOA about 4 miles out of town. We received a group text from the tour company owner that we would NOT be staying at the KOA, but with no destination listed. A few minutes later I received a phone call from John (one of the riders) and he said we had been kicked out of the KOA for some dispute with the KOA owner. John had independently booked a cabin at the KOA and he was welcome to stay, but his clothes were in the van with the tour owner who had already left him stranded there.
John is a very savvy business man and had called the KOA owner and explained the situation of the 12 riders who were in route to the KOA and that he couldn't explain the tour owners behavior. He smoothed things over so that the we could all stay there as long as the tour owner didn't set foot back on the property.
I was getting play-by-play updates from John while I was at the bar and relaying the situation to the group. We were discussing the possibility of spending the night on the floor at the bar. What a mess. Long story short, the group was allowed into the KOA (less the tour owner) and unknown to us at the time, our sole remaining guide, Susan had become ill and didn't join us either. So Arlen, the tour company director and husband of the own and Hank, the cook had to deal with all of the camp issues that night, including cooking dinner. In typical fashion for this trip, there was no explanation from the tour company, but group pretty much had all the details we needed from John.
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| The storm missed us (in more ways than one) at the Interior KOA, but we did get a nice rainbow |
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| Myles riding through Badlands National Park |
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| Improvised tennis shoe drying rack |
The humidity was high as we rode 68 miles to 1880 Town, an old movie set for Dancing with Wolves and another KOA campground. Jocelyn had reserved a cabin at the KOA with an air conditioner which she graciously shared with her 2 riding partners Sheri and Dorothy (the Amigas) and me. I squeezed my camping cot into the small cabin and enjoyed the AC.
We had a rude awakening at 4:30 AM when all the cell phones went off with a Severe Storm Warning. We were all watching the weather radar on our phones as we saw the majority of the storm passing to our west with reports of 80 mph winds. We only got about an hour's worth of rain, but everybody was up, so we had yet another breakfast of oatmeal, packed up and headed out.
The storm cleared out and it turned into a hot, very muggy day. The planned route was to cross the Missouri River to Ft Thompson then ride on another 25 miles to be shuttled back to a campground at the MO river. It was so muggy, I literally rang water out of my shirt after riding 33 miles to Ft Stockton's Indian casino. Several of us called it a day, had lunch at the casino and got rooms at the nearby motel to enjoy the air conditioning.
After hauling our bags back to the campsite on the river (tour company won't pick us up at the hotel even through it is on the way) to get our daily helping of oatmeal. We were shuttled to where the group had finished up their ride the day before. It turned out to be the nicest day of riding all week. A light tailwind, temperatures in the low 80's and not much humidity. It was a pretty quick and enjoyable 61 mile ride to Huron, SD and our rest day.
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| Our "mobile" kitchen... I wouldn't take this trailer on a 3 day Boy Scout camping trip. |
As I have mentioned, Hank, our cook, was working himself really hard the first couple of weeks. When the head guide quit in Missoula and the owner joined the tour, Hank re-negotiated his job assignment to only cooking dinner, driving the van and helping with loading and unloading. The owner fixes breakfast (oatmeal) and lunch (cold cuts and whatever salad was leftover from dinner). Let me correct that.... we had scrambled eggs and sausage once in the first 5 weeks of the trip.
As you can see, it is a major task to just unload all this stuff just so Hank can use the standard kitchen stove that is buried in all that stuff. There is no refrigeration for food storage, thus all the ice chests which leak on the baggage stored in the front half of the trailer. We need a food truck! Hank can't wait for this adventure to be over.
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| Getting ready to cook dinner. I will say the owner has brought some organization to the 6 ice chests so they can usually find what they are looking for. |
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| Progress as of July 1, 2026 |
Location: Huron, SD
