Wednesday, August 10th was our six year anniversary – a perfect day to visit our beloved 80 parcel of South Dakota prairie. North on 85 from Spearfish, over miles of open two lane highway under a blue sky. Isn’t this what every rider dreams of?
Soon the Crow Buttes Mercantile slowly appears on our left and we pull into the gravel, horseshoe parking lot for water, snacks and my traditional bag of Twizzler Nibs. It’s the only time I eat them and for some reason, after several years, they’ve become synonymous with this awesome little store in the middle of nowhere.
We write our names in the spiral notebook on the wooden kitchen table just inside the door, as we’ve done for the last eleven years. Outside, the wind blows across the grass and an occasional tractor trailer roars by. I could stand here all day.
We head out the gravel driveway and continue north. It’s now easy to miss our road since a very cool looking dead tree had fallen since last year. I’m glad I’d gotten several photos of it over the years. Our tires rumbled over the cattle guard and we rode that last six, dusty miles. I wondered what wildlife we’d run into on the road this year.
Sheep. (Please pardon the windshield bugs!)
And antelope!
We were lucky to catch our neighbor on the road visiting with another neighbor, and had the pleasure of a nice long visit, though we missed the rest of his family. We loved catching up, hearing about local happenings, what’s transpired over the last year. He advised us of who to call to get the ball rolling on utilities, so we can move forward with our permanent campsite! Heheheh..
We brought the drone this year! I was all excited to see the footage until I realized you don’t get the full effect without something for perspective. The bikes were quite a ways away and there is a quick glimpse of me, but it didn’t capture what I thought it would. Still pretty cool.
If you’re still with me this far, thank you. I know that some of you, especially those who are blessed to live out in the open, don’t find this particularly exciting. But trust me, when you come from a subdivision when you’re piled together with your neighbors and your yard is the size of a postage stamp, this is pretty amazing in comparison. We took a moment for an anniversary selfie.
After a while in the hot sun, it was time to head back before the next system blew in. Our time here is never long enough.
I’ve gotten used to racing the weather.
Until next year, my dear slice of heaven.
Awesome Kathleen! It looked like there was an animal in the distance when the drone was landing! Cool!
An 85 acre campsite, now that’s a big campsite. You could share with most of the other Sturgis campers.