Drive thru Spearfish Canyon

When we left the campground this morning to visit Mt Rushmore (previous footprint), the plan was to then drive back via Iron Mountain Road and spend an easy afternoon on our patio.

We changed our minds during our “breakfast with the presidents.” Seeing as we were already north of the narrow, curvy, slow-speed roads we have to negotiate to get anywhere from our campground, it made sense to check out a few more places before going back home.

So, we headed up to Hill City and beyond. We didn’t do much in any of the towns, so I’ll skip them for the time being and take you straight to Spearfish Canyon, which we entered from the south.

We debated hiking the Roughlock Falls Trail, but it was already 1:30p and we still had a ways to go before we started to drive back home. Instead, we just drove up to the falls area. Finding a picnic table hidden in the foliage, we had lunch first and then headed off on the short trail to check out the falls. There were enough people on the narrow, paved trail that we had to don our masks on and off, but it was well worth the walk down to the cascades that fan out over the rocks.

Back in the car, we continued our drive north, stopping to check out some cataracts and cascades. Bridal Veil Falls, which is visible from the road, had very little water streaming down the stone wall. It would have been disappointing, except that there was a mama mountain goat browsing nearby ... accompanied by its kid. The last time we saw mountain goats was at Tangle Falls on the Icefield Parkway in Canada. That was back in September 2009 ... a while back. So this was a particular treat.Read more