23.4 miles, 1569 miles overall
It was a short but productive day. We didn’t start riding until 10:57 am, 3 mins before we were supposed to check out of the campsite. Steve slept until we woke him to do laundry. Bob worked on his bike (it’s not clear whether he did any good, he may have done harm). Bob was the winner of the Golden tent stake award (I’m not sure how it’s awarded, but it sounds like I may never win).
We have decided, unequivocally, that salted roasted peanuts taste much better than unsalted roasted peanuts, and although we told Bob we would stop harassing him about the unsalted roasted peanuts when we finished the jar, consumption of the correctly purchased salted peanuts brought raw emotions flowing back. We will try to forgive him again tomorrow.
A final aside, we didn’t say enough good things about the Guadalajara Mexican restaurant in Spearfish where we ate dinner last night; the food was fantastic.
Okay, now to the progress update — When we arrived in Spearfish yesterday, a helpful, young, worker at the bike shop recommended that we take Maitland Road from Spearfish to Deadwood. He said, “you can do it”.
So we started riding on a nice trail through Spearfish and all agree it’s a beautiful town. When we found Maitland Road it seemed quite nice…
And it was, but the surface soon turned to hard-pack, and then the rain came on gently, but persistently. One by one we donned our rain gear (Bob, ever optimistic was the last to succumb). When the grade reached 14% in the rain and the surface turned to mud, we began to doubt the wisdom of bike-shop youth. But he was right, we did it.
We reached Deadwood at about 3:30. It’s a quaint old town, now geared fairly heavily towards tourism. There are lots of nice looking old buildings many still fulfilling their original purpose…
… as official buildings or saloons, but the other trappings of a functioning town were gone, with groceries and hardware stores replaced by casinos, saloons, restaurants and tourist shops. At a former gas station, now transformed into a sandwich/coffee/glassblowing establishment…
… we ordered sandwiches to take to our, at that point undetermined, campsite, then did a quick ride through town.
Our touristing done, we found our way to the Mickelson Trailhead…
… and we grappled with whether to pay one or 3 days worth of fees.
Deciding to purchase 2 days initially, we felt a little bit jipped after riding only a mile on the trail to the nearest campsite today.
The campsite is nice but expensive. Its most un-endearing quality is the height of the hill we had to climb to find the tent-sites. However, this does afford a nice view back down in the valley.
Some other pictures from the day.
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