Scenic South Dakota

Thursday, Sept 7…

Greg finished removing/re-caulking half the roof perimeter this morning. The other half will have to wait until his muscles have recovered (which, hopefully, will be before bad weather). Time to explore! 

We packed a light lunch and headed north for an extended scenic drive through the town of Lead (like the ore, but it's gold that was mined here - over 40 million troy ounces before closing in 2002) and Spearfish Canyon (SW from Lead, looping up thru Savoy and off the map), past the Broken Boot Gold Mine and south again into Deadwood (casinos, tourist buses, and an abandoned downtown Elks Lodge). Then we hopped onto I-90 to Sturgis, stopping just long enough to buy postcards to prove we’d been there. From Sturgis we turned south through Vanocker Canyon (green) to the tiny, historic town of Nemo. We never found Nemo.😟 (Seriously - we never hit an intersection that even suggested a community. But it was a lovely drive.) 

Picnic Spot in Spearfish Canyon

Open Pit (stripped) at Broken Boot

Downtown Deadwood

We passed this lovely little veterans'
cemetery approaching Vanocker Canyon

BlogThoughts… 1. Twenty years ago I drove to southern Indiana with my daughter for her first year of college. We followed I-90 for about half the trip. As we approached the SD border, it seemed that an increasing number of motorcycles were entering the highway. It was a little odd, but "oh well." Crossing the state line, we were both really hungry and decided to pull off for a meal. The next exit was Sturgis. We drove into town, realized instantly that this was the bikers' destination, circled back onto 90 and didn't stop again until Rapid City. This year's rally was a couple weeks ago, and Sturgis was a ghost town when Greg and I drove through.

2. We've spent a lot of time with the local map these last couple days. Several times I noticed Sanford Lab Homestake in small bold type at the fringe of Rapid City. It seemed an odd name (esp the homestake part), and I kept meaning to do some research. Finally (in Cody, I think) I Googled it. Turned out to be a special underground (like a mile underground) lab for studying radiation in isolation - perhaps the only (or at least one of very few) places on earth where this is done. Still in use, but also inviting outsiders to come and learn what they're up to.  Would've been an interesting place to visit. (Turns out Homestake was also the name of the gold mine in Lead.)

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