Thursday,
August 28, 2025 The Mickelsen Trail
I caught a
fly! I caught a fly! MEOWT!
I got to roll. I like it
here! I want to explore but my humans
won’t let me. I will claw the door so
they will let me out.
This
morning, instead of doing a walk, we readied the bikes and headed for the
Mickelsen Trail. We were thinking of
picking up the trail in Hill City and going south to Custer, but after talking
to ladies at the visitor center, they recommended going the other way up to
Mystic. The ride up to Hill City is pretty. Rugged mountains covered in pines and aspens
hug the roadside. We see lots of deer;
most of them alive.
The
Mickelsen Trail is one of the many rail to trail bike roads throughout the
country. Old rail lines are converted to
recreational use trails. In this case,
the trail is hard dirt based, with tiny sand gravel covering, giving you grip. It costs $5 a day for the use (or ($20) for
an annual pass, and there are kiosks at the trailheads for you to pay. You are somewhat on your honor, but we would
gladly contribute to the maintenance of this trail. The trail runs abut 108 miles from Edgemont
to Deadwood. There are companies that
will shuttle you around so you can do a part, and they bring you back. Spouse tried to call about 5 of them
yesterday and did not get one live person, so we figured we would just do it
ourselves and ride both ways. I actually
prefer that. You might not get to go as
far, but seeing the countryside from different angles is always fun for me. It is kind of cloudy, and warm if you are
standing still, but quite cool when you are moving.
As we leave
Hill City, the trail takes us through peoples’ backyards. There are a variety of large properties from
horse ranches to guest ranches, to ordinary people spaces. As we get away from the town, there are
various bridges crossing over streams, ponds, gullies and roads. Soon, we are
surrounded with black hills rocky crags.
A variety of pine trees and aspens line the trail. Various wildflowers pop up through the
grasses and out of rocks: yellows, purples and whites. We pass by some cows resting in their
field. All of them are black except for
one beige mama and her young’un. There
are streams and ponds with their reeds and cattails.
Continuing
on, we pass through two tunnels that were blasted in 1890 and 1891. They are supported with wood ties that look
like they are almost new. One of the
tunnels was arctic. I put on my new
windbreaker! The trail is interesting in
that it looks level, but it really isn’t.
We use our ebikes kind of like mountain bikes. We pedal.
We use the pedal assist, but only to a point that we are not dying. We get a good resistance, and maintain that
for our ride. If we get a good hill, we
might use the throttle to help us go up.
But to go down… no pedal assist and we coast, which is what I did for
miles. But remember, for all the
coasting you do on the way there, you will be working it on the way back.
The skies
are threatening. Originally, there was
no call for rain, but I am not feeling that.
We got to the Mystic Trailhead.
Spouse was hoping for a snack but there isn’t anything there but a
bathroom and a ‘train station’, which was a covered patio with a picnic table
and a bench. Normally, we have snacks
with us, but that slipped through our cracks!
The next trailhead is 8 miles up and there is food there, but looking at
those skies… naw… we have already gone
over 15 miles, we better head back.
You really
do see things when you go in a different direction. There were little valleys nestled in the
hills, some nice views of a snaky river. With about 3 miles to go, I felt the
first rain drops. I had been coasting
for awhile, and started pedaling. I
could hear the drops on my helmet. It
wasn’t pouring, but it was time to put the ebikes to good use and up the pedal
assist for the last mile.
As we got to
the truck, it was raining a little harder.
We got the bikes up just in time for a few more rain drops. The rain pretty much stopped in about 2
minutes. So we went up the road and saw
lots of commerce. Time to eat.
The one
thing I don’t like about the Black Hills…
they sooooo overdo the tourist thing.
Bazillions of souvenir shops and tchotchke shops. One restaurant we looked at wanted $30 for a
burger. Are you kidding? Is it lined with gold? We did find a gem of a German
restaurant. This was nice and it was
reasonable. I would actually go back if
I was in the area
When we got
back to Artie, Rudy let us know that he WANTED out! He started clawing the screen door. Really?
Discipline first… and THEN we let him out. The little bastard caught a fly... gotta reward him...
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