Spearfish Canyon Birding

with No Comments

If you’ve never considered yourself a bird-watcher, there’s no better place to start than Spearfish Canyon. It’s home to 130 bird species, including some you’re unlikely to find in your backyard. This is where eagles launch themselves from the high rimrock and glide on canyon air currents, then suddenly drop … Read More

Lost Attractions of the Black Hills

with No Comments

Nothing lasts forever except maybe Black Hills granite, some of the planet’s hardest rock. But everything else disappears eventually, including some Black Hills summer attractions you may recall from your youth. Remember summer nights spent watching greyhounds run at the dog track between Rapid City and Black Hawk? Yes, you … Read More

Big Rocking Chair

with No Comments

World’s biggest mountain sculptures, world’s biggest motorcycle rally, western hemisphere’s biggest gold mine, two of the planet’s biggest caves, and probably the number one biggest cave once we determine where Jewel and Wind caves intersect. If you’ve missed it, the operative word here is “biggest,” a Black Hills obsession, whether … Read More

Plastered No More

with No Comments

If you grew up in Iowa or Minnesota in the 1960s, and your next door neighbors took a Black Hills vacation, you maybe didn’t recognize their car when it returned. The car would be plastered with bright bumper stickers from every cave, gravity house, and curio shop the neighbors visited. … Read More

Bridal Veil Falls

with No Comments

Bridal Veil Falls can embarrass you. It’s visible from the Spearfish Canyon highway (there’s even a new observation deck) and when it cascades full in spring it’s spectacular. It roars and sprays mist, cascading a hundred feet. So a few weeks later you decide to take out-of-state friends up there, … Read More

1 2 3 4 5