The One in the Black Hills

Continuing our 4th of July adventure!

The morning of the 5th we packed up our tent and drove around to see a few more sights (like Crazy Horse) before hitting the trail.  The roads in the Black Hills are suuuuper windy (that's wine-dee, not win-dee) and narrow.  Just a reminder:

 
Justin got a little umm, annoyed is a nice way to say it, at the tentative drivers.  Here's Justin's impression of non-Utah drivers on winding mountain roads:

I almost peed my pants this was so funny!!  He kept doing this whiny voice "Oh no, the road curved!!" to go along with the face.  Priceless!

Here's how Utahns handle winding roads:

 

Like men.

This was our first (and possibly only) backpacking trip for the summer and it was a good one.  We decided to do a loop and hiked a little over 10 miles the first day.

Here's the trail we did:

We started and ended at the same trailhead (green square/car) going counterclockwise around the loop (yellow dots).

We only saw 2 other hikers at the very beginning, 2 horseback riders about an hour later and that was it!  It was really fun to be out in such a beautiful area with just my hubby :)

Trailhead

Justin at our lunch spot.  What a mountain man!!

Pretty views.

At the end of the first day we were looking for a stream to camp by because we were running low on water but the one indicated on the map was dry.  We just kept walking until it suddenly started to rain.  That was the fastest we've ever set up the tent!  Thankfully we got inside pretty quickly and (even in our haste) chose a good campsite as we stayed dry even though it rained all night.  Oh yeah, and we're super hard core backpackers because we brought our tablet and watched some TV before we went to bed :)

First night campsite.

We had pad thai for dinner.  Justin said I couldn't have any of the peanut butter.  It literally had his name on it :)

We woke up the next morning, packed up and hiked to Harney Peak.  This was the steepest part of the trail.  Justin and I made really good time the entire trip though because we were in the Black Hills and we're used to mountains.

The pine beetle is sweeping through the Black Hills.  So sad :(

I look like a hobbit!!

Harney Peak had some beautiful views but a lot of traffic coming from another trail (the Sylvan Lake area is really popular and easy to hike).

Words to live by :)

The top of Harney's has a fire tower.  The army used to man it...

which is why this marker is there.  We were pretty much standing on it to take the picture above.

 

 I look great in this shot.  Justin is just silly :)

We ate lunch on the peak and then decided to ditch the tourists and get back to our isolation.  We hiked to within a mile of our car and set up camp for the second time.  This time we were a little pickier about our campsite as it wasn't raining on us.  We camped up on a little knoll just off the trail.

Cathedral Spires

These lilies grow wild all around the trail.

Hobbiting again.

It actually did rain on us a little while we were walking.  This time we were prepared!

Campsite #2- we opted for higher ground.

Once we were all settled inside the tent we heard some weird animal noises.  Kind of a half bark, half moo if you will.  Neither of us had heard it before but I thought it could be elk.  We were actually within cell service so Justin decided to search for "elk sounds" on his iphone.  I had to tell him to plug his earphones in- if it really was an elk I didn't want to attract it!!  YouTube didn't produce anything exactly like what we were hearing but after a little while we realized there were actually two of whatever-it-was out there!!  One on either side of us.  So crazy!!  Neither of them were very close to our tent but they were clearly talking over us!  A little scary at the time because I really had to pee but did not want to go outside!  I did eventually and didn't see any big animals nearby.  I even looked around for them.  So I guess scary movies are actually accurate when people go checking out weird noises.  We were both super tired and fell asleep quickly.  I didn't hear anything all night so the elk or whatever must have gone to sleep as well.

It also rained all night again but our trusty tent kept us warm and dry.

Sunday morning we woke up, packed up and were at the car within 20 minutes.

On our way out!  This part of the trail was probably my favorite.

There were huge boulders on each side and it was so green and pretty!

I didn't even notice until I took my shoes off but I'd earned a gigantic blister on my heel :(

I highly recommend SD.  Probably only in the summer though :)

The One with Mr. President(s)

Justin and I tossed ideas for a Fourth of July trip back and forth for a while.  We couldn't decide what to do.  I didn't really want to take time off work even though the 4th was on a Thursday because I knew I was taking off almost the entire week following for Girls' Camp (post(s) coming soon!).  Finally, the Monday before, Justin asked me "What do you think about going to South Dakota?"  Why would we go there?  Mt. Rushmore!!  We both feel like our time in UT is coming to a close and want to take advantage of the (few) things on our list that we haven't gotten around to seeing quite yet.  This is probably the closest we will be to Mt. Rushmore so we decided to do it.  We're so spontaneous :)

We left around 9am on the 4th of July and drove straight through WY to SD (~10 hours!).  The sun was still up when we got to our campground so we set up our tent and drove to Keystone, the tiny town right outside the monument.  We picked up some amazing hamburgers for dinner and took them to the "park" with us (most of the monument is a parking garage).  Justin climbed up the boulder field at the bottom of the statues that are the result of multiple dynamite blasts.  Apparently they had to blast through "soft" rock to get to the carvable granite from which Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt emerged.  That is the order in which they served as president but for some reason Lincoln is actually on the far right.  This makes Roosevelt's face the least prominent so maybe that's why they're out of order.

That's me in the red shirt!

 

 

This walkway is lined with the flags of all 50 states.  Pretty cool.

In order of importance (I mean, alphabetical):  Arizona

Florida,

And Utah.

They showed a movie about the making of the monument and the four presidents who made the cut (pun intended).  The rangers timed it perfectly and as the closing credits came on with "America the Beautiful" playing, spotlights grew brighter and brighter on the monument.  Super cool!!  Especially on the 4th of July!

 
Afterward they had all audience members who had served in the armed forces come help them take down the flag.  It was a big group!  Really cool! 

There was a huge crowd so Justin and I decided to walk out on the boardwalk trail leading to some ideal picture taking spots while everyone else fought to get out of the parking lot.

It was so dark up there and kind of hard to get anything better than this.  We didn't have to wait long to get out of the parking lot though and thankfully avoided a lot of traffic on the way back to our tent.  The road back over the mountain to our campsite was pretty crazy.  Check these out:

 You drive over this bridge and then into a tight almost 360 degree turn.

 And there were tunnels like this all over the place in the Black Hills.

To be continued...

The One at White Pine

The last weekend of August Justin, his dad and I went backpacking to White Pine Lake.  It's actually really close to Red Pine which we've hiked to a few times before.  White Pine is the left fork on that trail and we finally took it.  We've heard that it's prettier and also an easier hike.  Neither was true unfortunately but it was still fun.  White Pine is less steep (or supposed to be- sure didn't feel like it toward the end there!) but longer (for sure!).  The weather was amazing though and we found the best campsite.  There was only one other group there so it was also quiet.

I don't think this picture does justice to the last ascent.  It was a killer!

 Our campsite!  We found it this way.  Thanks previous campers!!

It was right on the edge of a cliff overlooking the lake/pond.

 

Justin recently bought a green laser pointer.  You know you've really made it when your laser is green!!  It made the campfire smoke look really cool though.  Just in time for Halloween!!  Spooky!!!

The next morning we hiked around the reservoir and Justin had fun steering :)

These are my fluffy sleeping socks.  They keep my feet warm.  It was chilly the next morning so I just decided to hike down wearing them.  Justin thought they looked funny with my hiking boots and thermals though :)

This may have been our last camping trip of the year :(  Good thing we made it a long one!!