Day 11 – Out West – Colorado back to Spearfish, South Dakota, August 17th, 2010

We rolled out of the Super 8 as the sun was coming up, our destination was again Chris’ Camp in South Dakota, where we began our trip.  Later, Bill and I would comment that, after two weeks out west from South Dakota, returning to Spearfish didn’t feel like the end of our trip, but instead felt like home.

Riding east on 70, we cruised alongside the Colorado River at the base of the mountains and saw several rafts making their way through the rapids, loaded up with rafters.  It wasn’t long before we approached Vail, which was pretty cool to see, (literally pretty cool, I had to stop and suit up) and I kept picturing everything covered in a thick blanket of snow.  It seemed weird that this was Vail, Colorado, with the lush green grass and trees covering the mountains.  The sprawling ski resorts at the base of the Rocky Mountains seemed bare without the snow, and the ski lifts in the distance appeared to be waiting patiently for winter.

That afternoon, we would pick up 25 in Denver and head north into Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Again we had to pull off the highway to wait out a storm, had lunch at Subway and gassed up the bikes.  25 North would take us to highway 85, just north of Cheyenne.  85 felt like home, as following it back into South Dakota and past Spearfish would take us into Buffalo, where Bill and I have 80 acres of beautiful, glorious, absolutely nothing but prairie.   Along 85, like many of the highways out here, the common sunflower grows wild.  This is actually where I took the header picture at the top of my blog, along highway 85 in Wyoming.  This yellow flower has it’s place in my story, but I’ll save that for another day.

I had to laugh several times throughout the day, here in Wyoming and also again as we crossed into South Dakota, someone had painted or affixed a red dot over the nose of the yellow, diamond shaped deer crossing signs that were posted along the highway.  They became visible a bit too late to snap a picture.   Keep an eye out for Rudolph!      

Luckily, we missed the rain for the day, but the ride into Spearfish was frigid once the sun went down.  Bill stopped to put on a jacket and I took that opportunity to put on every single piece of cold weather gear I owned.  We made it to Chris’ Camp in the dark and luckily got one of their cabins for the three remaining days we were there, rather than a tent site.  I was really starting to think that my tent camping days were dwindling, as I stood there shivering in the camp office.  After dinner at the Spearfish Perkins, we settled in for the night under a blanket of stars, the clouds slowly blowing past in the black sky.