The day’s ride to a rest day is often a special one, and today was no exception. Top ten ride, said Jeff at the morning meeting. With Jeff, that usually means a lot of climbing. I think we were prepared for that, but fearful of headwinds slowing us down on a rough climbing day. Fortunately, the winds were favorable for much of the day until a long 20-mile stretch on a bigger highway into town.
We were on our way to the Black Hills of South Dakota. That same place where Rocky Raccoon grew up in the famous Beatle’s song. Rocky had problems with love in the song, but our problem was getting up the hill into the parkland.
We climbed out of Newcastle, past the South Dakota border with the requisite border pictures. South Dakota is our fifth state. The climb accelerated after the border. We pedaled up over 1200 feet in the first 12 miles of the ride today. That put us into an area of the forest that had a bad wildfire burn just a few years ago. Fire is a transformative force in the forest. I’m sure it looked quite different before the fire.
After more than 30 miles of climbs and descents, we coasted down into the cute but touristy town of Custer. If you want buffalo skulls and the Flintstones theme camping park, it’s your place. Our checkpoint was there and Jeff was ready with the news that Lance Armstrong had put serious time into all of his major rivals and is poised to take over the race. We got to the dorm in time to see a replay of the end of the stage.
After Custer, the park featured more climbing into a beautiful forest with giant granite promontories peeking through, and lakes interspersed in the valleys. There were also buffalo along side the road, and in some cases, in the road. We cruised down a long curving highway along the stream for miles and miles. We could hear our day off calling us closer. Many agreed that it was our most beautiful ride yet.
We pushed downhill against the wind out of the hills and made a left turn onto a busy four lane highway to Rapid City, a bustling town of 60,000 souls. We’ve been on the road for five days, our longest stretch without a break yet. We covered some very difficult ground and did it well, but we’re all looking for a rest. Not unlike Rocky, who checked into his room, only to find Gideon’s Bible. Gideon checked out, and he left it no doubt to help with Big Riders revival.

Kelsey is our featured today on this fine day in the Black Hills. This morning she is getting ready to climb some hills as she looks tanned and ready to go.