Day 68 - ending near Rochford, SD - The Great Plains Trail - Sort Of

July 21, 2023

Day 68 - ending near Rochford, SD

A note: I'm almost to week behind in posting updates to the journal. When I have a cell signal or wifi, I send out an "evening report" to some family and friends giving them a short summary of the day, and letting them know I arrived safely. Then later, I write another report for the journal. In an effort to be more efficient, I'm going fill in a few more details on those evening reports, then copy them for posting to the journal. We'll see if that helps any with keeping me up to date.

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Day 68 - Custer, SD to Rochford, SD *Note: I discovered at 11:20am this morning that I had accidentally turned off GPS tracking at 8:30am. Though it doesn't show on the map, I did follow the Mickelson Trail.*

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Up at 5:10am to a cold morning. Packed and left at 7:05am.

Destination today is Carsten Cottages near Rochford, South Dakota. All my riding today would continue on the Mickelson Trail.

I wanted a good breakfast to start, and had just that at Our Place Restaurant here in Custer. My waitress said she'd never seen anyone who could eat a whole pancake after a complete another meal before.

After picking up Gatorade and ice from Dakotamart, I was back on the trail at 8:55am. Lots of folks on the trail today, many of them using e-bikes. I think they were rentals. Made me feel like a slowpoke.

I arrived in Hill City at 11:52am. I wanted some ice cream, so used Google Maps to find ice cream shops. Ended up at Cream. I had a cup of vanilla ice cream and then a root beer float. That was enough of a break. I was back on the trail at 12:55pm.

Noon mileage: 15.9 miles.

There were uphills for me today and downhills. The uphills were pretty slow going. I stopped at 1:45pm, to make a reservation for my camping spot tonight. It's a good thing I did it then, because almost the rest of the day, I didn't have a cell phone signal.

At 2:45pm, I was at Redfawn Trail Head. It's one of the high points on the trail, so it was downhill for me going north and also for the fellow I was talking to there who was going south.

It sprinkled on me a little as it seems to do here. Hit or miss and it doesn't last long. There are four tunnels on the trail and I went through them all today. Tunnel A at 3:27pm, Tunnel B at 3:37pm, Tunnel C at 4:22pm, and Tunnel D at 6:28pm.

Between Tunnel C and Tunnel D, I met two cross-country cyclists (Dennis and Chris) from Illinois. They started in Bellingham, Washington, rode down to Anacortes, Washington, and are now on their way to Washington DC. It was fun sharing plans and experiences. They were almost too close to some awesome lightning in Montana.

At 7:26pm, I got off the trail and onto a highway SD-17 for half a mile to get to the campground. Arrived at 7:35pm. I have the tent camping area to myself. I see where they have everything set up here for when the motorcyclists show up for Sturgis.

I should mention that today's scenery was very stunning compared to Illinois corn and soybean fields. I finally had to convince myself that I didn't need any more pictures of the babbling brook which was alongside the trail the second half of the day.

It's predicted to get down to 51F tonight. I'm going to bundle up. I'm also going to take the day off tomorrow. They have laundry machines here and I have so many reports that I need to get posted. Fortunately this place has wifi, because I have no cell signal this evening.

There's a brook nearby that I can hear from my tent. That will be a different sound to fall asleep to.

Jeff

Spent: $17.96 plus $5.04 (breakfast) + $4 (trail permit) + $8.25 (Gatorade, Clif Bar) + $12.87 plus $1 (ice cream, root beer float) + $33.15 (campsite) = $82.27