So far South Dakota has awakened our senses. A perfect beginning to our west bound ventures. So unexpected, the silent, somewhat dreadful mix of dead air and absence of wildlife around the camp. Leave with a sense of awe. The Badlands we have conquered.

Onto Custer State Park and the Black Hills.

Set up camp on a sloping forest bed of orange, springy pine needles on the upper loop of Center Lake Campground.

Enter Frank and Lilah. Inhabitants the camper across from us. Lilah – Mickey as she prefers – paying tribute to the lovable Disney mouse, wandered over with hot chocolate and the rest is history. She preferred hers with Schnapps and we couldn’t agree more. Thick as thieves we were by the span of a drizzly afternoon.

Hiked around Center Lake. Frolicked and climbed like children up and around the waterfall and took the slippery moss rocks across the miniature deluge. Joy in the little things.

Make it the full way round, head back to a lightly drizzling, rain washed camp.

We continue to underestimate the sheer natural beauty of this unlikely state, South Dakota….

Every morning, this one being no exception, our walks yield transcendental sights, over and over again. Sunrise and daybreak meld with blues and pinks. What a sight.

We drive our wide Chevy through the thinnest switchback mountain pass. Seeking the Cathedral Spires and The Little Devil’s Tower. Those trails and rock formations are well frequented and many traipse lazily- or else take off like a setter dog bound towards a fowl in flight. Seeking the highest mountain, chancing the most challenging climbs.

After an uphill mountain ride instilling fear in this unproven mountaineer, perilous falls but a wheels length astride, we barrel into a fog. Again, time our perfectly synchronized companion, coaxing the sun to ignite behind our first glimpse of the breathtaking spires.

No words to give justice to another vastly incomprehensible beauty. Towers of matte red rising rock surrounding us in a valley of trees along the path of sand and shining quartz chips.

We reach the actual Cathedral Spires, near the top elevation. These jagged peaks thinner and augmented from the rest, two on the right side pressed together as if hands praying: thanking the creator for the safe haven amongst the sprawling Black Hills surrounded by tiny yellow blossoms and endless blue skies.

Back to the van. Higher up and further in. Arrive at Little Devil’s Tower trail head. After bottleneck of tourists in R.V’s and Subaru’s and one car at a time mountain tunnels on Needle’s Highway. Seems a decade, yet drive on.

We’ve been gifted a local secret. Our aforementioned neighbors Frank and Mickey told us of “The Poet’s Table.” An off the beaten path sanctuary of sorts. Decades ago someone carried a wooden picnic table and stools into an alcove of rock hidden above a runoff trail. We were determined to find it, but decided to hike on the actual trail to the peaks first. Onward to Little Devil’s Tower.

The Cathedral Spires, at a few thousand feet lower in elevation in the early morning fog and dew covered a.m. had made for a chilly hike. Despite the crisp morning cool, the incline of the steep winding trail, under a piping hot South Dakota sun warming as noon approached – had us shedding layers in no time. Baking flat stones to cooking temperatures and delivering on promises of desert heat.

Another incline. First leg through the forest, heavy steps, hot panting breaths. Walking stick easing the weight and pressure of the incline on aching knees.

Second leg clambering over rocks, mountainous terrain, Spider-man stance, crawling and reaching for a handhold….finding purchase among slippery stones. Loose gravel meets newly worn rubber soles, grip, climb, extend.

I’m not sure why we keep underestimating South Dakota, but we clamber over the last rock formation to the top and there we were…speechless yet again. We are 6,900 feet up on top of Little Devil’s Tower and the world seems to open up beneath us for infinite miles in every direction. We take in the 72,000 acres of towering pine, ash, birch and maples layered through the expanse of Custer State Park and beyond.

The back of the mighty Mount Rushmore in the distance. Here we are on top of the world. We try and take it all in but how do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

Feel the warm rock surface, taste the clean, thin air. Burn an image into the back of your retinas to relay to overstimulated senses and brain tenses and hold on to that for forever. We eat the rest of our lunch, sandwiches spread with potato salad, salty sunflower seeds already shelled, all while looking out over eternity captured here for us mere mortals to behold.

Scale down the sheer cliff face and repel to the base. Just kidding. Walked back down and finally returned to our pursuit of “The Poet’s Table.”

We stumbled around -up and down gorges and valleys for what seemed like hours. It was probably more like thirty minutes but we had already been hiking for five hours, running low on ambition and bellies beginning to grumble in earnest. Return in vain to the van, scratched and weary, to try again on the morrow.

Back to camp, rest and break bread with Frank and Lilah. Pheasant stew over white rice and acoustic guitar around the fire. Burning white hot with pitch- the petrified sap oozing out and making flames lick the coals and warm the immediate air – twice as hot as plain dried wood.

Tent beers and bedtime. Too many tent beers and overslept a bit. Frank cooks an amazing breakfast over the fire on a large oval metal disk- fashioned from farm machinery of Frank’s past.

Oblong blueberry pancakes from the slope of the cook dish. Dippy eggs and salty, crisp bacon, mouthwatering from a distance. What a spread.

Pack up, hugs and goodbyes tinged with sadness. A couple of old hippies showed us twenty-somethings what a life well lived can look like at age 62. True and dear friends. Part ways, but never forgotten.

One last task before we head southwest to Colorado. Back to the damn Poet’s Table quest. We try again this time with not one, but three sets of cryptic local directions. Things like “200 paces into a valley of aspens pointing up the runoff from the broken angled birch, behind the rock face with a vertical crack next to the huge dead ponderosa beside a bigger dead spruce.

Turns out all the rock faces have vertical cracks.

At last we chance upon locals just leaving the secluded alcove that hides our destination. Michael spots the vibrant writing on the face of the rock wall first. At last we’ve made it.

Tucked into a dry alcove sits a worn green wooden picnic table with four green, bench-like chairs. A cabinet rests against stone layers – housing ledgers and journals of the adventurers before us. Poems, wishes, letters, hopes, and even some melancholy musings fill thousands of pages and names in ink and paint cover every visible surface of rock, table, cabinet and chairs.

We Were Here.

Sense of accomplishment and tranquility at this last little wonder of the Black Hills. We left small tokens of our presence and hiked back to the Chevy.

Kudos, South Dakota. You’ve got some rad nature to conquer. But, I’d say we pretty well killed it. On to Colorado – Wyoming technically blocking our way.

Huh. Wyoming. I saw my first tumbleweed…aaaaaaaannnd moving on.

See ya in Colorado. 😉