On the Mickelson Trail Day #1

We knew we weren’t in much of a hurry this morning as the temps would be a bit chilly. When I got up I checked the temp and it was a crisp 34 degrees. That was about 10 degrees colder than predicted so we were a bit surprised. But, we packed our extra stuff and when I took it to the truck I thought “it is pretty crispy but the sun felt warm” and by 9:00 we were on our bikes heading out. By then it was a steamy 45 degrees. The first seven miles were rather flat and we chugged along. The trail was crushed gravel and we couldn’t make great time but we rode quite steadily.

However before too long we started climbing. The hills were never steep but we had 5 + miles at a time with a steady climb. It was never hard but just wore us down. We discovered we were not well trained for this. It was really a pretty hard day for us. I carried all the luggage to give Dana a lighter load. We tried to take regular breaks for snacks and hydration.

Some of the terrain was grassland and fairly flat, and then later we had beautiful forests. As I understand we will get into more wooded area in the next several days.

We arrived in Custer around 2:00 and we found a coffee shop where we had our drinks and shared a cream cheese danish before heading to our hotel. We passed Mt. Rushmore Brewery as we entered and it looked like they are doing an Oktoberfest Weekend. Guess where we are heading for dinner and drinks.

About 7 miles out, we were given a Sunday afternoon show by a group of 9 mule deer hopping along. Make sure and watch the attached video. Earlier in the day, we saw a lot of hoof-prints and droppings on the trail. They were bigger than deer so I assumed they were elk. They must have had a Saturday night party on the trail.

We will have a super short day tomorrow. We have about 65 miles left to Deadwood and plenty of climbing. There aren’t many options for overnighting so we will do a 15 mile jaunt tomorrow and get within 40 miles of Deadwood. The short day will give us time to explore Custer and also Hill City, tomorrow’s destination.

Now we rest our legs and hope they recover enough for the last day. That will be probably worse than this one. Yay!Read more