Day Thirty-Seven: The Mickelson Trail

Today was a really nice biking day. We rode exclusively on South Dakota's most famous rails-to-trails path -- the Mickelson Trail. The Trail runs about 108 miles total, but we took it only from Deadwood to Hill City, a little over 50 miles. It was somewhat slow going, however, for several reasons. First, the surface is crushed limestone and gravel -- so, not as bad as, you know, GRAVEL, but still...it provides a fair amount of rolling resistance (I don't think I topped 16 mph all day). Second, it was a pretty big elevation gain. We climbed a cumulative 2700 feet or so, and about 1800 of that came in the first 15 miles. The saving grace was that the gradient rarely exceeded 3 or 4%. Third, it was so darn pretty I just kept stopping to take pictures. We rode through tall pines, across wooden bridges, through old railroad tunnels blasted through the cliff, next to small, rapid flowing rivers, through open meadows -- it was just very scenic. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

Tomorrow: Mt. Rushmore! Tourist trap or great American icon? To be continued....

Here are today's route and metrics: