Mississippi River Trip: Black Hills Blues by MVP

We woke up early, but started late.  Having electricity to charge everything and hot showers in the morning was just too tempting to pass up.  Once we’d packed up we headed to the ranger station outside of the Black Hills National Forest.  The road there is a motley collection of tourist traps (Come see the drive through zoo!/Uncle Willies Gem Shop/Black Hills Ghostly Putt Putt) until you make it out of town and hit the ranger station.  Once there we looked at the warnings (no campfires, no bear sightings yet) and got a map of the dispersed camping sites available in the park, then headed into the hills. 

The Black Hills are gorgeous – towering Ponderosa pines mixed with stunning rock formations and scrub oak, rivers and creeks clear and full of fish, we both heaved a big sigh of relief to be out of the city again and into the forest.  We started looking for likely camp spots, and found a road near Sheridan Lake that had a dozen sites noted, so we headed that way.  Unfortunately the roads were a little much for the Impala, so we turned around and started back down to the main road, only to stop again when the Impala decided she’d had enough and overheated.

Larisa whipped out her cell phone to call for a tow truck.  No signal.  I took out mine.  No signal.  We went to the top of the ridge we were along.  No signal.  The Impala was on a downhill slope, so I put her in neutral and managed to coast back down to the pavement.  No signal.  We decided to walk to the nearest area that seemed likely (Three Corners) and try to get a call in there, but just as we started along a car stopped and Larisa cadged us a ride with a couple of young ladies who drove a car that makes mine look neat and trim by comparison.  Larisa climbed across a greasy cooler to sit on some brown stain while I tried not to spill the pistachio shells that were in the cup holder.  Beggars can’t be choosers, and the girls were nice enough and sweet to give us a ride.  Better pistachio hulls than a 10 mile walk in the heat.

It only took about two hours to get the car towed into Hill City.  We arranged to have it looked at and began to wander around town hoping to find a camp site near enough to haul our stuff to by hand, but the closest was 8 miles out of town.  We wound up staying at a Super 8 and felt good because we were able to shave 30 bucks off the rate.  The cost was still equal to about 5 days of paying for a campsite.  We slumped into the room feeling dejected, but a wash and some relaxation gave us our energy back and we decided to explore the town and grab some dinner.  

Larisa noticed an ad for a $9.99 filet mignon at a place up the street and as shocking as you may find this, I declared that we should have dinner there.  We went and asked to be seated – the wait was 45 minutes to an hour.  No biggie, we added ourselves to the list and decided we’d look at the other restaurants along the street in case we found something likely.  As we walked we noticed one thing:  Of the nine restaurants along Main Street, only the Alpine Inn had a wait list.  We decided to wait, just in case the food was that good.  It was.  The restaurant only serves two meals:  Steak with baked potato , Texas toast, and a salad with homemade buttermilk ranch, or pasta with Texas toast and the salad.  The steak was tender, but over cooked (medium rare is apparently understood to mean medium well).  Larisa’s pasta was fantastic, and obviously made that day, on site.  The service was excellent as well.

While we had been waiting for dinner I wandered into Things That Rock, a store that sells various semi-precious stones and jewlry, as well as stuff ofr gold panning and rock hunting.  I struck up a conversation with the wonderfully nice owner, Shari.  I told her of our dilemma and that we were looking for things to do, and also mentioned that Larisa was a huge rock hound.  She immediately made suggestions for Hill City and gave us several great places to go rock hunting.  I also looked into gold panning, and Shari suggested a couple of creeks where she’d found gold before, and I resolved to buy a gold pan if she’d teach me how to do it.  5 minutes later we had the rest of our Black Hills stay planned out.  After dinner was over I took Larisa to meet Shari and we left knowing that as soon as the car was fixed we’d get outfitted for rock hunting and gold panning and head out.  We slept soundly that night, but the showers weren’t so wonderful as the night before.

THANKS SHARI!!!!