Seventeen days of fun in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The first night we boondocked/dry camped at a place called Dude ranch on the Missouri River. Boondocking means no hookups, no electric, water or sewer. We don't need that in the camper, we have generators and tanks for water etc. It was so peaceful there even with 6 other campers, we were all spread out.
Before we crossed the river, we pulled into the rest area and met Destiny. Wow is she magnificent! Even hubby enjoyed seeing her. One just doesn't realize just how tall she is until you are standing at the base of her.
Next stop was boondocking south of Lead, SD for 4 nights and riding some ATV trails in that area. We met up with hubby's cousin, wife and their friends to ride with. We had rain on Friday and we chose to drive the Spearfish Canyon in the truck.
On the way to the Hills our truck had a warning light come on. So we stopped at a service dept. in Spearfish and they said to come in on Monday morning. We then found a campground there and booked 3 nights. On Monday afternoon they said they had to order a whole new exhaust system and it would take 5-7 days coming by truck from Michigan. WHAT...we hadn't planned on being in Spearfish at all. We ended up there for 11 days. What he hadn't told us was that was 5-7 days was after it shipped and didn't include the weekend. We were lucky the campground could accommodate us that long. We had a beautiful spot, the back of our toy hauler opened to a nearby walking path and a stream, yes we could see part of the stream and hear the water.
The weather was gorgeous there too, no humidity and 70's and low 80's. We now can say we know the ATV trails there really well, haha. That was our past time. It had rained there on that Friday so the trails were muddy, ummm not just muddy, there were cows all over there and you know what that means. Our ATV got pretty dirty!
Here are a couple sites we saw as we rode around on the ATV.
We were kinda upset it was taking so long to get the part in but we made the best of our time sightseeing.
I did get to a couple of quilt shops out there. I might have bought a couple more panels. I couldn't resist getting a Gnome one! And I found a red truck panel, one that I had made up last year and promptly sold it, looked for more then and couldn't find. This shop only had one left so I snatched it up! I did have my sewing machine along and pieced 5 runners in our down time. On the way home we were able to stop and see my old roommate from single days. She and her hubby live on a farm and let us camp there overnight. It was great getting to see them as it had been 14 years since we were together.
My question for all of is have you ever been to the Black Hills? We have several times and did all the touristy things then so we didn't really do that this time. So much beauty in this area. I highly recommend it. Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend.
