Day 8, August 2nd – Custer State Park, The Needles and Iron Mountain with Jenn and Joe Temple

Today we met up with Joe and Jenn at their house in Black Hawk around 10AM and set out for the Custer State Park wildlife loop. With Joe as our guide we can just follow and not worry about getting lost or making a wrong turn. 

Joe showed us some of the lesser traveled roads and we covered the Needles Highway and Iron Mountain roads that are just perfect motorcycle roads, bridges, tunnels and pig tails.

 

We also took a stop at Sylvan Lake, it was made by damning between two huge rocks.

It made a very nice lake that has short walks around it and behind the damn.

 Trail behind Sylvan Damn, rocks stuck between huge rocks above.

Back side of Sylvan Damn














From Sylvan we all decided we were a bit hungry so stopped and had Buffalo Burgers.  We then moved onto Custer State Park for the wildlife loop.  It is a great ride even if you don't see wildlife. 

We did come upon some one making an ass of himself in the road.  Jenn straightened him out.











We did eventually find several herds of Buffalo, they were not close but close enough.

We took the short route home since we all were getting a bit fried in the sun. 

We said our goodbyes to Joe and Jenn between Rapid City and Black Hawk.













It was another day of perfect weather and great riding, we clocked around 180 miles in the day and are over 500 miles of biking since our arrival. We have not made plans for Monday yet, but we have rain coming on Tuesday, so we will likely go for a ride.