Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota

June 22, 2025

The Black Hills has become one of our favorite locations, and one of a relatively few number of places that we have been to more than once. We like the mountain-ish vibe, green rolling hills, sparkling blue lakes, and rugged rocks topped with ponderosa pine. If we could leave out the hail and windiness that we often encounter, the area would be near perfect.

We had a beautiful travel day heading toward the Black Hills, and we arrived at our destination without incident.

Waiting for the cows to cross as we left our Badlands boondocking spot

Cute little vintage motel that is apparently still in business

This time in the Black Hills, we stayed in a more remote part of the national forest, and while it took a while to get anywhere, it was such a treat to share the area with so few other visitors. Plus, we had a really scenic campsite.

Ah, the green lushness of the Black Hills (compared with our most recent Badlands destination)

Our awesome view of Deerfield Reservoir

The downside of being away from civilization is that cell service can be spotty, and we needed to drive about 25 minutes to find a good enough internet connection to have our weekly Monday night cards game with the family. When we returned home, we discovered that a passing storm had deposited a bunch of hail. Good thing it was relatively small and did no damage!

Why did the turkeys cross the road??? 😉

South Dakota thunderstorms often come bearing frozen gifts

The calm after the storm

On Tuesday, we walked down to the beautiful reservoir.

The lightly-trod trail was conveniently accessed close to our campsite

Such a pretty lake!

On Wednesday, we rode a portion of the scenic Michelson Trail, a former railroad right-of-way turned recreation trail.

Our super scenic lunch spot

Rick was trying to get shots of fish that had swum up the rapids, but the pictures didn't really turn out

We stopped in the cute little town of Rochford for an ice cream break, as the temperatures were heading close to 90 degrees by afternoon. If you want to learn more about the town, here is a blog post by some random person on the internet who took better pictures than we.

Kind of wish we had stopped here for lunch--looks like a fun place

Stopping for an ice cream break in tiny Rochford

Inside the "Small of America" general store

Heading back the way we came (alas, not a loop this time)

Back through the tunnel--it was nice and cool!

We enjoyed our bike ride on the Michelson Trail so much, we decided to find more places to bike closer to our campground. One of the guide books we picked up at the Hill City Chamber of Commerce had said that there was a hiking/biking/horse trail that went all the way around Deerfield Reservoir. Since we had a poor internet connection, we couldn't research much about it, and we were a bit dubious. We have tried trails before that claim that they are bicycle-friendly (for various definitions of "bicycle") and have found some of them a bit outside of our comfort zones, shall we say. But, hey, we were up for an adventure, so we decided to give the trail a try the next day.

Spoiler--lots of "fails" on this route!

At first, the trail wasn't too bad...a little meager and somewhat poorly defined, but manageable

After a while, the descent became steeper and quite rocky --Julie wasn't loving the experience

Soon there wasn't much of a trail, and we turned back the way we came--Fail #1

Rick quickly found us a Plan B, and it wasn't half bad

The views opened up as we followed a maintenance trail under some power lines

Seeing the roller coaster terrain ahead of us (and not really loving the power lines anyway), we decided to once again turn around--"Fail" #2

We eventually gave in and opted to take a road part of the way around the reservoir

We found ourselves a quiet picnic spot for lunch and then headed back home

Still looking for more bike riding opportunities the next day, we drove to a nearby scenic old road that led to the top of the Deerfield Reservoir dam.

Pretty rolling hills

This was a very pleasant old road to ride our bikes on

Riding up to the dam

We were sad to leave our little piece of paradise, but we weren't sad to leave the contractor-grade generator that filled the pine-scented air with melodic wafts of mechanical droning the last couple of evenings. One of the advantages of this lifestyle is if you don't like the neighbors (or their power choices), you can always move!

Goodbye Black Hills!

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