54.01 mi / 5:15:53 time / 10.2 mph avg. / 31.5 mph max. / 3949 ft. climbing
Staying at Hanna National Forest Campground (5600 ft.)

[Editor’s note: I uploaded a bunch of pictures in the gallery. If I was more of a blogging pro, I’d weave them into my journals, but as at stands, I just threw ’em all up there captionless. They’re chronological though, and hopefully you at least recognize Mount Rushmore!]

Today was a nice lazy day to play in the Hills. Ok, a lazy day with 4000 ft. of climbing, but hey, it’s all relative, right?

In the morning the campground host was nice enough to let me charge up my laptop at his outlet. We were the only two people in the campground, and he was actually a pretty cool guy as far as lonely-guys-looking-for-someone-to-talk-with go. He does a lot of day trading, so he knows a good bit about tech companies, and said he’d head over the the Holiday Inn in Keystone every morning to steal their WiFi and make his trades.

The lazy day got out to a nice start with a couple miles of “lazy” climbing (up to 11%) to Mount Rushmore. The woman at the gate waved me on through; I don’t know if that’s standard policy, but it saved me $8. Unlike the Badlands, they didn’t list a specific fee for bicycles, only cars and RVs. Maybe they figure not enough people will ever make it up the hill. I got there pretty early, and it was misty/foggy/cloudy, so I thought I might not be able to see the presidents at all. Luckily by the time I reached the viewing area, the fog had cleared nicely. At first it wasn’t as big as I was expecting, but I think that’s just because the main viewing area is pretty far away. When I did the loop trail they got a lot bigger.

From there I took an off-road shortcut along the Centennial hiking trail for half a mile, which brought me to a valley road and took me straight into Hill City. I stopped at a bike shop there to buy a tube, and found out that the woman working there grew up in Hoffman Estates! Then it was on to the library (located inside the high school) which was the first one I’ve stopped at without WiFi, but they had a wired connection I could use so that was just as good. Then lunch, and all of a sudden it’s 2pm and I’ve only gone 13 miles.

From there I got on the Mickelson Trail, a 106-mile rail-trail (for the railroad geeks, it was built by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad). With all due respect to the grand old Elroy-Sparta trail, I think there is a new king. The tunnels were a lot less impressive, but the views were spectacular, and with its steady grades and gravel surface, it makes for a very relaxing path through the hills. Outside of Hill City, I saw one cyclist (putting his bike in his car), a group of three walkers, and that was about it. Even the rest stops were excellent, with shelters that you could take cover in under bad weather. It eventually took me up to a peak of over 6000 ft., after an incredibly steady 18-mile climb, at which point I got off and switched to the road.

It was getting fairly late by this time, and on a day that never broke 68 degrees (even though it had cleared up early on and stayed sunny), it was down to the low 50s as I was making my high speed descent to the campground. I cooked dinner to warm myself up a bit, and then holed myself up in the tent, hoping that I wouldn’t wake up inside an icicle. When I was registering with the campground host, he said “Well, you know, this is called ‘Icebox Canyon’!” (and it is, it says so on my topo map!)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am and is filed under bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.