After 10 days of travel and almost 1500 miles we finally reached South Dakota! Yahoo!
While driving the 35 miles north to the little resort town of Hot Springs we started to see the foothills of the Black Hills, dotted with the occasional pine tree ....

Hot Springs, named the gateway to the Black Hills for obvious reasons, is a pretty old town, made up of tall sand-stone buildings lining main street, which in it's turn runs along the Fall River. 

The area boosts several hot springs and their naturally warm 87 °F (31 °C) water was the reason to build Battle Mountain Sanitarium in 1907, for patients suffering from rheumatism or tuberculosis.

After a short coffee break we left, once again driving north, and than .... there they were .... the Black Hills!
From a distance the pine-tree covered hills look very dark, hence the 'black' in the name.

Driving north towards Custer you skirt, and actually drive into, the Wind Cave National Park, and eventually, after a couple of miles, you leave it again.
The cave the park was named for was the first cave to be designated a national park anywhere in the world.

Above ground, the park includes the largest remaining natural mixed-grass prairie in the United States.
There's no fee for this small stretch and if you're lucky,  you'll see some wildlife. Which we were, and did ....

Tatanka! The Wind Cave bison herd is one of only four free-roaming, and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America.

When we stopped to take a picture, prairie dogs popped up all around us. They were such fun to watch as they were watching us!

Although there seem to be a lot around, their numbers have been greatly reduced during the last couple of years, due to a plague-like illness.

Fortunately, they have rather big litters so their comeback will be fairly swift, once they beat the disease.

The skies started to cloud up when we finally arrived in Custer, where we were going to spend a couple of days, to see some of the many interesting sights around there.

We were staying at the French Creek Campground, another Passport America, and thus half-price campground, conveniently located only a block behind main street.

This again was a little run-down Mom and Pop place, in dire need of some updating. Good enough if you're self sufficient, like us, but not quite up to standard for what they normally ask for their sites.

Despite the rain that had started to come down, we walked over to main street to check out some of the shops. Quite a few were still closed for the season, and even the visitor center was closed for the weekend, so we called it a day and settled in early for a quite evening of TV watching.





The next day was my Birthday, and we went to the town's most colorful building, the Purple Pie Palace, for coffee and a piece (or two) of their famous pies!
The strawberry-rhubarb I had was excellent, and so was James' blueberry!
Since it was another rainy day we decided to stay out of it, literary, and to go underground. Like in, into a cave!

Jewel Cave is currently the third longest cave in the world, with just over 166 miles (267 kilometers) of mapped passageways
It gets it's name from the two types of calcite crystals  known as nail-head spar and dog-tooth spar that are found in the cave, which are the "jewels" of Jewel Cave. 



The guided tour route through the cave, by a Park Ranger, involves walking up and down 723 stair steps along a 1/2 mile loop, (equivalent to 40 flights of stairs).
The crystals have beautiful colors ....

.... and come in many different forms, like: boxwork, cave popcorn, flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites, draperies, and a long ribbon drapery called the cave 'bacon':

The cave temperature is 49°F (9°C) so a 'light' jacket, sweater, or sweatshirt is recommended. I should have known, when the ranger showed up with gloves, that it was going to be cooler than that.

Although dressed fairly warm, we about froze our butts off, mainly due to the slow going and the many, long lectures given throughout the tour, during which we had to stand still too long for comfort!

Time to warm up! Which we did, in the funky sports bar the 'Bugling Bull', in downtown Custer.

We toasted my Birthday with a good beer and excellent meal, while watching a golf game on the tiny table-side TV, mounted to the side of every booth. We'd never seen that before!

 

That evening we changed our plans for the rest of the 'trip'. 

Due to the dreary weather we'd leave the next day and will come back to 'do' the sites on a sunnier day, somewhere (hopefully) in the near future.

It's really no fun to do any sight-seeing in the rain, and we'll end up staying only about 1 hour away from here anyways.

And so we did. After a nice, unhurried breakfast the next morning (like we ever hurry?), we first drove to Hill City and from there to the Walmart in Rapid City, where we had coffee and stocked up on groceries.

From there we had only 30 miles to go to Sturgis, just outside of the Black Hills, where we had made reservations for a month at the Days End Campground.
Being one of the only places already open this early, closest to the northern Hills, we will eventually end up in Lead, where we are confirmed for the rest of the season.

The Park was practically empty and we could pick any site we'd like.
It took us the rest of the day to set everything up. The dish gave us a little bit of a fit this time, but eventually we succeeded!

James searching for the right satellite connections .......

The next morning we woke up to blue skies and lots of sunshine! Murphy's law....

It was warm enough to have our coffee outside, although the wind was still a little frisky .....

I went for a walk on the, quite extensive(!), grounds of the campground and found welcome signs of spring:

It's funny to sort of get back in time, or more precise, back in season. We're going to experience spring all over again!

This Killdeer tried to lure me away from her nest in the meadow ...

In the next couple of days we explored a little bit of the towns in and around Sturgis, just to get the lay of the land. 

James found out that he had indeed a job with the contractor in Lead, although we hadn't heard from the guy for a while, and had started to doubt if he still did. Cool!

 

Of course we checked out Sturgis.
Sturgis is famous for being the location of one of the largest annual motorcycle events in the world, which is held annually on the first full week of August. By all accounts, the town is a rural one with just 6,700 residents and, yet, the resources and infrastructure stretch each year to accommodate the 400,000 to 600,000 motorcycle enthusiasts from around the world, who attend the annual  Rally.

Most of the town is made up of saloons, casino's and motorcycle-related businesses.

The largest and most popular venue is the Easyrider's saloon, it takes up a full city block, houses over a dozen bars plus 3 concert stages and features the beefiest menu in the Black Hills.

A close second is the famous Knuckle Saloon with 7 bars, MMA fights, bikini bike washes and legendary food.



It's atmosphere is what you'd expect from a motorcycle bar & grill in Sturgis. Cool nostalgic items both outside and inside.
We decided to have dinner there and had the famous steak-tips with blue cheese, Yum!

A great beer from the recent addition to the saloon, it's very own Brewery, topped it all off.

This year will be the 75th anniversary of the Rally and instead of the 4 to 600.000 people they're expecting more than 1 million this year!
I don't know if it will be wise to visit during that time, 'just to have a look', it's going to be a zoo!
We're told they sometimes have to block of the Freeway exit, until enough people have left, to let others in. We'll see!

We drove to Deadwood and Lead to see how long James had to commute, which was a little longer than we'd hoped, and checked out Spearfish for some of it's stores and restaurants.

Deadwood

We also dropped in to Recreational Springs, the campground we were going to stay in Lead in about a month, when they'll open up. 
We introduced ourselves to the, very friendly and easygoing, owners, and picked out, and reserved, the spot we liked best.

The grass in the meadow of Recreational Springs is only just free of snow. It's the area they open up for the Ralley only.

At the end of the week we learned that they actually had turned on their water a little earlier than expected!
We were told that we're welcome to come over, anytime we're ready.

Since this means that James only has to commute for about 10 minutes instead of the 40 he is doing now, we jumped on the offer and decided to leave that weekend.
The Days End had no problem with us changing our month's stay into a week's one, and refunded us the difference in rate.

Cool beans! Other than having to pack everything up and setting up all over again, we were very happy to move.
We might miss this sunset though! What a gorgeous 'days end' .....