Nebraska and The Black Hills

When we left the Casper area of Wyoming and headed to The Black Hills of South Dakota, we decided to route ourselves through Nebraska so we could add that state to our travel map. We stayed at Fort Robinson State Park in Crawford, NE for 2 nights before moving into South Dakota. The weather was beautiful when we arrived in Nebraska but little did we know this would be the last good weather we’d see for a while.

Fort Robinson State Park

The history of Fort Robinson State Park is fascinating. It stretches from the era of western expansion through WWII and beyond. It served as a military post to protect Indian agencies during the Indian Wars. It kept adapting as the years passed and served as a K-9 Corps training facility during World War II. While here, we did get the opportunity to take a fascinating horse drawn carriage tour of the grounds. It was cold and rainy but well worth it. If you ever visit this Nebraska State Park, I highly recommend the guided tour.

Another attraction worth your time is the small museum that is located in the park. Its primary attraction is the unique mammoth fossils that were discovered nearby. The exhibit is titled “Clash of the Mammoths“. The display is of two male mammoths with their tusks interlocked as they apparently fought to their respective deaths over 10,000 years ago. Like the guided tour, a visit to the museum is a must.

Angostura Recreation Area

Our next stop was just outside of Hot Springs, SD in Angostura Recreation Area. We had booked one of the only sites available in the Cheyenne Campground. Again we find ourselves staying a very nice recreation area and the weather was just horrendous. Our first night was merely overcast and cold but we soon found ourselves with an inch or so of heavy wet snow all around. Luckily we discovered that Wind Cave National Park was just on the other side of Hot Springs and it primary attraction is tours of the cave. What a perfect activity for a cold snowy day at the end of May.

First of all, we didn’t even know there was a Wind Cave National Park and secondly, we have a goal to eventually visit all the National Parks so this was perfect. There are few unique things about this cave. It has the large amount of a formation known as boxwork; over 90% of all known boxwork in the world. The cave gets its name from the winds that can either be blowing in or out of the only known natural entrance to the cave. This wind is caused by the difference in barometric pressure inside and outside the cave. Native Americans thought the land was breathing as the winds changed from inward to outward.

The weather continued to be poor throughout our stay at the recreation area. One highlight was meeting some new friends, Tracy and Joel. They are new full-timers like us and are considering upgrading their 5th wheel to a DRV Mobile Suites or some other make. They had the courage to knock on our door and ask about ours so we invited them in and had a nice visit. We exchanged contact information, became Facebook friends and now have someone else we can look for when on the road. That’s how it works in the full-time RV world.

Sheridan Lake South Shore Campground

After a one night stay in the KOA in Hot Springs to dump tanks and fill up with water, we headed for the Black Hills and Sheridan Lake. While we were experiencing the inch or so of snow in Angostura, folks were reporting from the Black Hills that they got well over a foot of snow. Needless to say, we were a bit worried about the condition of the campground and even wondered briefly if it would be open. Well, it was open but our concerns were somewhat warranted as we had to clear our site of snow before we could safely back the 5th wheel into our site. Just getting to our site was a challenge we didn’t expect. The road was extremely narrow and appeared even more so as the snow had not been plowed off the entire width of the road. At first we thought we had taken a wrong turn and were driving into a campsite!

Once we got our site cleared with help from one of the camp hosts and his ATV with plow, we had difficulty getting in because of tree branches on the opposite side of the road. As we jacked the 5th wheel to start the turn into the site, the nose of the 5th wheel was swinging out and bumping up against those branches. After a couple retries, we decided to strap the branches against the trunk of the tree to get them out of the way. Once we did this, we were able to get into the site.

Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Weekend were actually quite nice. On Saturday, we explored Hill City and stopped at Sick-N-Twisted Brewery on our way back to the campground. When we got back to our site, we were dismayed to discover that we had only gained about 5% back on our batteries. Evening was approaching and we were under 80% on our batteries after a full day of sunshine. I guess solar power is not best when in a wooded campground.

On Sunday, we took the bikes into Hill City to ride a portion of the George S. Mickelson Trail, one of the premier Rails-To-Trails rides in the country. We rode from Hill City to Custer, a 14.7 mile one way ride and then turned around and rode it back. The trail goes uphill for about 9.5 miles from Hill City to the crest and then downhill to Custer for a little over 5. Those first 5 miles of the return trip were tough after sitting and eating lunch at the town park in Custer! Once we made the crest, however, we enjoyed virtually coasting all the way back to Hill City. Given that Hill City has 4 micro-breweries, we had to pick another to visit after the 30 mile bike ride. We stopped at Miners Brewery because it appeared to be the most popular of the 4 and for a good reason. The ambiance was very nice and the beer was excellent.

Our reservation for Sheridan Lake Campground was for 9 nights. This seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time because the place looked so nice and we could easily get to the bike trail for as many rides as we liked. After constant rain on Monday and Tuesday with no end in sight coupled with our inability to get a cell signal and the lack of solar power generation, we decided to cut our losses and leave early. What should have been $26/night stay turned into $48/night after leaving 4 nights early. Before leaving on Wednesday, Dan made a video with his drone of a portion of the drive out. He is still learning to fly the drone smoothly while making corners and changing elevation as is evident in the video. Hope you enjoy the video.