Day 32 - Wed September 23rd

Rapid City, SD to Orville Campground, Black Hills, SD
52.77 miles
5:01.57 hrs
38.7 max
10.4 avg

I had a lot to take care of this morning before heading into the Black Hills. I changed my rear brakes (front are still good), mailed some maps to my folks, bought a 110V to USB converter so that I could charge all my appliances and hopefully will not have to go without a charged cell phone or ipod for a long time!

It felt so good to enter the Black Hills and get out of the high winds and head south a little bit! The ride through the hills was gorgeous and I was so happy to be on something other than flat ground with plenty of green vegetation! I stopped at a cute little Norwegian/Swedish store where I tried and fell in love with salted black licorice! One of my main goals of the day was to see Mount Rushmore. Some people, a while back, told me that it was not worth going out of my way to see but I now disagree! I think it was an amazing feat to make those faces in that rock at such a day in age. Even though I had to climb up the hills to get to the monument it was well worth the effort. I just wish I had a little more time to spend there hiking around and exploring the landscape!

As it was starting to get late and I only had about an hour and a half of sunlight left I headed out towards a couple campgrounds that were on my route and still open for the season. This is where I am SO glad that I purchased my warm weather gear (arm warmers, leg warmers and windproof gloves). With the sun going down fast the shade kept on getting colder and colder. I put on my cold weather gear and was in heaven! It really works! Hopefully it works in colder weather as well!

I made it to the Oreville Campgrounds with just enough time to scout out a camping spot, meet a girl who was traveling across the country for job relocation and decide that it would be better to share a campsite and save some cash ($5 each for the night instead of $10). We ended up going into Hill City to get something to eat and it was fun to have someone to talk to who was also on the road exploring the US!

Oh yeah, I broke another spoke just 30 miles into today! What is going on with my rear wheel? This should not be happening. The wheel immediately went out of alignment and I made some tension adjustments on opposing and adjacent spokes to prevent rubbing. After a few phone calls and checking the internet on the phone I was sad to find out that the next 'potential' bike shop was not until right before the Big Horns. The adjustments made enough of a difference that I was comfortable waiting until the next bike shop. Unfortunately, there were no certain bike shops anywhere on my route before the Big Horns, this made me a little worried but I figured I could fix it myself if need be.