07.13.07
South Dakota Road trip! Day 4
We enjoyed sleeping in once again knowing we probably wouldn’t be climbing much that day. We got ready and got on the road. We drove by the climbing areas and all of the parking spots were blocked due to the fireworks happening that night, so no climbing at all for us. We decided to go caching instead and slowly work our way back to break up the drive. We started in Hill City but realized most were back in Custer SP. So we just started driving randomly around trying to find other ones. Eventually we ended up back in Keystone. I told him this one cache would be worth it, so we started our way up the hills. We found the old mining building but not the cache. The gps was acting up and eventually lost the signal, and on the new signal gave us totally new coordinates. So we hiked a bit farther uphill and then found it quite easily. It was placed near two mine shafts that looked a little scary but pretty darn cool. this was one of those caches that made us really appreciate the sport- it was amazing to be in a place like that with absolutely no one else around and just imagining what it would have been like. On our way out of the hills we happened upon the old 1880 train, we lucked out once again!
We found another cache on our way out of the Black Hills- just a scenic overlook and easy find. After lunch we hit a visitor center for another find where we dropped off a travel bug we had picked up in Hill City (our first ever). We continued on I-90 and eventually pointed us to an exit for 2 caches that happened to be on the same road. Both offered great views of I-90 (oddly pretty actually). We followed the gravel road up a hill to a small grouping of trees. The find was way too easy, but it did offer us entertainment. We saw a mouse and 100s of grasshoppers. They were the coolest part. They were flying everywhere and were funky cool colors – greens and oranges. It was like the parting of the sea when you walked. We headed up the road to the next one, and this one required us to drive onto a field. Even more grasshoppers! Found the cache down a hillside. As we drove out of the field a few grasshoppers tried hitching rides and be real travel bugs. 2 of them almost made it to the Badlands, it was pretty impressive considering we were going almost 80 part of the time!
We passed through the Badlands to get to the next 2 caches that were just south of the park. The first took us down an old dirt “road” where we scared some cows. I had fun mooing at them. The next one was an old abandoned town. It was pretty cool- all that was left was a sidewalk, a foundation, an old car and some random metal stuff laying around. The prairie dogs weren’t too excited about us being there and a snake was protecting some of that metal (and gave me a good fright!). Inside the cache was a pic of the old town – sounded like when the railway was pulled the town just died. Another cool cache! We didn’t have any caches left so we decided to continue the long drive home.
If you haven’t been to the black hills or the badlands, it is at least worth 1 trip- and if you are a geo-cacher there are many many for you to find out there! We will definately return for more climbing…
happy travels to everyone!