Day #67: Rapid City to Keystone, South Dakota (16 miles)
- chrisbentley349
- Aug 6, 2024
- 1 min read
What a miracle a good night's sleep is! At the end yesterday's ride I felt broken, but after 8 hours of rest I felt ready to get on the bike again. What Shakespeare calls: "Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care..."
I had decided to make today's ride a short one after yesterday's marathon... it was such a good idea, because today had a lot of climbing: 1,500 feet up... and almost as much down... 1,100 feet! I allowed myself to sleep late, starting at 8:30am... The wind was blustering but turned out not to be a factor once I got into the Black Hills.
The terrain looked positively alpine and so different than the prairie and the Badlands of the past few days...
After climbing to 5,000 feet, I started on the 3 mile descent to Keystone...
Action shots:
After riding for 15 straight days since Minneapolis, I'm going to take a rest day tomorrow and do sight seeing at Mount Rushmore :-)
Snapshot: 16 miles, starting at 8:30am and ending at 11am, with 2.5 hours of actual riding:
I can't believe how close these bright, sunny alpine skies are to the Badlands! Glad you get a rest day - that did seem like a lot of riding in a row -Nof
Keystone SD elevation is 4554 ft, which is higher than most (33!) 4000footers in White Mountains NH? Only 15 4000footers are higher than 4554 ft, That’s crazy.