My life is exploding with change, a glorious firework of freedom and the unknown in front of me! As I approached the sale of my home in mid July, everything felt just a little bit off, though heading in the right direction.
The adventure actually began the week before the closing with a bike trip in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I joined my girls, Joy, Robin and Sarah, on an unforgettable excursion with the plan to bike 109 miles of the George S. Mickelson Trail, beginning in Deadwood. Through planning, we knew the first 16 miles or so of the trail would be an incline, but we were not prepared for its actual incline. About four years ago, Robin, Joy and I biked 107 miles through Wisconsin on an old train track turned trail and I figured the Mickelson Trail would be similar, not connecting the dots between the trail and the Black Hills mountains!.
Leaving Deadwood, the incline didn’t seem that bad. But that changed quickly. None of us had trained enough to be biking in the mountains at a steady incline that you couldn’t stop peddling even for a second to let a leg rest. If you did, the bike stopped immediately. The heat didn’t help either! Needless to say, I stopped and walked frequently. At about the 5.5-mile mark, we were really struggling. I was worried that Joy was getting close to heat exhaustion. Robin and Sarah had biked ahead so at about the 6-mile mark I contacted them on the walkie talkie “tattling” on Joy, voicing my concerns. We met up with them at the 7-mile mark and talked about our next move – do we go back the way we came, or continue another nine miles at the same incline? It had taken us four hours to go seven miles, with the last two miles taking 1.5 hours. We turned around and went back the way we came, with one detour on a loop trail.
At one point I thought “why do I do this?” Then I looked around and said “this is why.” The surroundings all along the trail are gorgeous! I saw many things I wouldn’t see if I wasn’t on the trail.
We chose to bike sections of the trail for the rest of the week, avoiding the long inclines. The second day started with Sarah and Joy working on their bikes at the first trailhead while Robin and I got the cars situated. We leapfrogged cars, leaving the bikes at the starting trailhead and then dropping the car with the bike racks at the destination trail head. A cool thing that happened: Another biker stepped in to help Joy and Sarah and taught them a lot about their bikes. The chain had dropped on Sarah’s bike a couple of times the day before, and the adjustments he made really helped!
Once we got rolling, we saw a couple of tunnels, took a break by a waterfall, met some fun people and spent the day in gorgeous mountain scenery.
At one of the tunnels we chatted with a young woman, probably in her late 20s, who bikes the trail annually bringing a group of boys. We chatted about the incline from Deadwood and she said they never bike those inclines. Shaking her head she said, “I don’t know how people do it.” She has a driver that picks them up at certain points and they section bike.
That made this old lady feel accomplished that we braved 7 miles of that incline.
We biked between 13 and 17 miles a day through such diverse terrain – tight forests, cities, loose forests, meadows lined with trees, rock formations, natural rock air conditioners, tunnels, rivers, streams, ponds… We biked along a ridge overlooking a valley with mountains on the other side. We biked along a peak that was about 10 feet wide with drop offs on each side. We biked along on a high plateau as we exited a forest where we could see a far away city. We also biked through a huge variety of weather from extreme heat to freezing rain. At one point, it was about 90 degrees out and we were getting pelted by tiny bits of hail! That was so strange.
We also took a couple of detours. We visited Mount Rushmore one evening where we saw the night show, learned a lot about the presidents and why they were chosen, and watched as veterans from the audience retired the flag for the night. I kept thinking how much my mother would have loved that.
And we hiked a “moderate” hike in Custer State Park one morning before we went biking. The hike was a bit more challenging than we expected, and it was well worth it with a beautiful waterfall at the end.
While on the bike trail, we also saw a variety of wildlife. We saw deer, turkeys, a ground hog, chipmunks, a variety of birds and lots of cattle. It was fun to watch the cattle’s respnse to us as we biked by, especially when it was raining. The whole herd would look up and watch like we were crazy people!
Our last day, we rode about 16 miles, in the rain, to finish our trip.
This trip was hard work, and it was wonderful! We ended up biking about 80 miles. A little less than we planned, but a perfect amount! We can do hard things! We did it!
Thinking about the beauty of the Black Hills, being out there in all its natural glory, nearly brings tears to my eyes. It was such a privilege to experience it, and to share it with my girls.
