Dispatch 13: Edgemont to Buffalo
The morning air was chilly. I put on my moto gear, rolled out of my tent, and set up my camp chair to brew coffee. We are on a gentle hill at the crux of a congregation of pine covered mountains around us. We lingered at camp this morning, enjoying coffee and toasted homemade cinnamon bread.
As we rode along the red bluffs of the Black Hills National Forest, a Cat Stevens song played in my head. “Oh baby, baby it’s a wild world…” We were in the wilds of South Dakota’s Black Hills, but this whole trip has been a wild dive into an exotic world of unknown locales along the Great Plains. Jerod and I have been smiling the whole way. Those smiles have opened doors. Folks feel our stoke and are always eager to share their stories with us.
Cat Stevens warns in the rest of his song, though, that “it’s hard to get by just upon a smile…”And, the tourist town of Custer wanted nothing to do with ours. The restaurants were shutting down for the season. We found a lunch place, and they immediately told us all the things they didn’t have and took our orders with haste. They didn’t care where we had been or where we were headed.
Jerod and I found our smiles again as we rode through the forest. The quaky aspen trees applauded with their yellow leaves shimmering in the light breeze. They were happy to see us! We took a brief break at Deerfield Lake and rode through Spearfish Canyon, following a slow line of cars as we headed into Spearfish, the city. The leaf peepers were taking in the fall color.
The sun set and temperature dropped as we rode north out of Belle Fourche. We made a brief detour along a dirt road to the geographic center of the 50 United States and stood in the middle of a dark prairie on a remote road. An American flag flapped in the wind. It was serene and beautiful.
Heading north, the temperature dropped to the 40s, and at our 65 mile per hour pace, I was chilled to the bone. We pitched our tents at the Three Toes RV Park in Buffalo, South Dakota. Their shower did not require coins, and I took full advantage of the endless hot water.
