South Dakota - Day 4
Great wildlife, fabulous scenery, and wonderful riding made today the best day of the trip for me.
I woke up this morning early, well before breakfast. I was staying in a cabin at the Sylvan Lodge, surrounded by nature, so I grabbed my camera and took a walk outside. I photographed a variety of birds which I will post about separately, but I also saw a number of marmots about. This was my favorite of those photographs.
After breakfast, we all headed out for a ride through the Needles and Custer State Park. The temperature was chilly as we set off. Given that the first 8 miles were mostly descents, we dressed warmly.
Soon, we were on Needles Highway. Needles are a set of granite spires that stick up out of the ground.
Here, we actually traverse through one of the needles.
I think this photo gives a nice sense of the landscape we were riding through.
We had a great descent for the next 5 miles as we excited the Needles. The road was steep but not too steep, and the turns were not too tight, so I was able to let the bike fly, only braking occasionally for a turn. Generally speaking, I am a fast descender, so I quickly passed by the bicyclist who were in front of me. Unfortunately, after about 3 miles, I caught up to a car and had to slow down. On these types of roads, a bicycle can descend safely at a significantly faster speed than a car.
By the bottom, the landscape had changed dramatically having left the mountains behind. The temperature was significantly warmer, and many of us shed the layers we had put on to ward off the morning chill. I took this photo of the ferns and birches when I stopped to shed my knee warmers, arm warmers and skull cap.
Soon we were climbing up and cruising down rolling gravel hills.
As we made our way from forested land into prairie, prairie dogs started appearing with regularity.
Soon, the landscape had changed quite significantly.
After a number of rolling hills like in the last photo, we crested one final hill and were met with this stunning vista. I stopped and got off of my bike just to enjoy this view. Surprisingly, there were a number of birds about: American Kestrels and Nighthawks in the air and Bobolinks on the flowers. I will share photos of these in my upcoming bird post.
This is a photo of a Pronghorn or South Dakota Antelope. These antelope can run at 60 mph for long distances. For good reason, this one seemed unconcerned about me and my bicycle.
Perhaps 5 miles later, we came across a large heard of bison. This photo only captures a portion of the heard.
From a safe distance, I pulled out my good camera with the telephoto lens to take a few photos. As you could see from the lead image of this post, some of the bison were quite near the road. Consequently, I put away my good camera, flagged down a car driving past, as asked if I could use them as a shield as they drove past the bison. A nice couple from Colorado was very obliging and drove slowly allowing me to ride along side as we past perhaps 10 bison including a mother with a calf all within 10’ of the road and 2 that actually wondered onto the road.
After a few more miles, we were back in the mix of trees and grassland which we had ridden through earlier in the day.
Shortly before the end of our ride, we passed by this creek. Overall, today was a wonderful day with such a wide variety of landscapes, vistas, and wildlife. Tomorrow is essentially an off day. We can do a quick ride before departing the inn at 10am, then making our way first to Mount Rushmore then back to Rapid City. Since I have an afternoon flight, I have decided to end my riding here, pack up all my biking clothes and equipment, then use tomorrow morning’s time to photograph birds.