avondale training journal, starting Dec. 2018 (comments welcome)

[RuntheMouse]

Great job!

 

[Herding_Cats]

Congrats on surpassing your goal for your race! Looks like a lovely course.

 

[avondale]

@GollyGadget @WillRunForPizza @The Expert @RuntheMouse @Herding_Cats Thanks so much! I appreciate it!

 

[avondale]

Aug. 9 - 10, 2025
First part of South Dakota Hiking Trip

Saturday (Aug. 9)

We arrived in Rapid City, SD reasonably on time. We ended up with a few hours to fill before we could get into our rental house, so we walked along Rapid Creek in Founder's Park, which is downtown in the city.

• time: 56:02
• distance: 2.25 mi
• average pace: 24:50
• elevation gain: 49 ft (corrected)
• comments: It was in the 80s F and we were still in jeans, so this was definitely too warm.

Sunday (Aug. 10)

Two hikes in Custer State Park.

Sunday Gulch Trail

• time: 2:06:38
• distance: 4.17 mi
• average pace: 30:23
• elevation gain: 847 ft (corrected)
• comments: This was a fun hike. The first part goes around Sylvan Lake. Then the trail plunges into the gulch. This would be a lot of boulder hopping and scrambling except that they've put in lots of metal handrails, so you can swing yourself over gaps and level changes. Fun and very scenic. After about 1.5 miles, it turns into a pretty normal trail through the forest back to the lake.

Cathedral Spires Trail

• time: 1:04:46
• distance: 2.16 mi
• average pace: 30:02
• elevation gain: 607 ft (corrected)
• comments: This hike was basically just blasting straight up to an overlook. We passed through a number of the interesting rock "needle" or "spire" formations, but I didn't think the actual overlook at the end was particularly outstanding. It was fine.
• comments: As we were coming back from the overlook, the clouds were definitely looking darker. There weren't thunderstorms in the forecast, but we were glad to get off the trail. Within an hour, there were isolated thunderstorms throughout the area.
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[avondale]

Aug. 11, 2025
Next part of South Dakota Hiking Trip

I wasn't sure that I was going to post every day, but there are a lot of good photos!

Monday (Aug. 11)
Hike from Horsethief Lake to Mt. Rushmore (and back), through Black Elk Wilderness and Mt. Rushmore National Monument

• time: 4:13:29
• distance: 9.4 mi
• average pace: 26:57
• elevation gain: 1911 ft (corrected)
• comments: I thought this was a fantastic hike! It was very pretty with an array of forest types. It wasn't extremely hard, just a bit long. We were passed by a group of three horseback riders a little over a half mile before we got to Mt. Rushmore, and those were the only people we saw on the trail the whole time.
• comments: The end of the hike (halfway for us, since we had to hike back) is across the road from the entrance to Mt. Rushmore, so we went in to see the monument up close. We did the little loop walk that takes you up as close as you can get (an up-the-nose view). All of that added about 1.4 miles to our distance.
• comments: My husband didn't enjoy the hike as much because he was breaking through all the cobwebs across the trail. It did have some bushy sections that were annoying.

My mother is on a two-week bus tour with her best friend that goes from PA west through Nebraska into Wyoming, loops up through Wyoming and South Dakota, and then eventually back to PA. What would be the chances of my husband and I being in the Mt. Rushmore area at the same time that their tour came to Mt. Rushmore? 100% apparently, LOL. We didn't meet at Mt. Rushmore, but we came to the restaurant their group was having dinner at that day and ate with them. In the photo, my mother is on the left (in blue-green). They are having a great time on their trip!

 

[avondale]

Aug. 12, 2025
Next part of South Dakota Hiking Trip

I wasn't sure that I was going to post every day, but there are a lot of good photos!

Tuesday (Aug. 12)
We had reserved tickets for the Fairgrounds Tour at Wind Cave National Park at 9:00am and then reserved tickets for the Scenic Tour at Jewel Cave National Monument at 12:20pm. After that, we did a hike near Jewel Cave in Black Hills National Forest. It was a bit of a long day!

Wind Cave National Park

The attraction at Wind Cave are the cave formations called "boxwork". They are filamentary spider-web-looking lattices that are visible mostly on the ceiling. Our tour was 90 minutes and had about 40 people. It was a good tour. The photo shows a section of boxwork on the ceiling of one of the caverns, maybe a 10 ft x 10 ft section.



Jewel Cave National Monument

The main attraction is Jewel Cave is the calcite crystal formations on the walls and ceilings of the caves. Comparing Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, the individual "rooms" in Wind Cave were generally smaller and not as tall. The facilities (path through the cave, stairs, lighting) was more modern in Jewel Cave, so a better experience with that. The photo shows some calcite stalactites that the ranger guide lit up with her flashlight - the biggest ones were may 8 inches long. Our tour was 80 min and had about 40 people; another good tour.



Hiking: Hell Canyon Trail in Black Hills National Forest

• time: 2:16:50
• distance: 5.62 mi
• average pace: 24:19
• elevation gain: 998 ft (corrected)
• comments: This was a spectacular hike! The hike was a long, skinny loop. The first half of the hike went down the floor of the canyon, which was pretty and pleasant. The rock walls were interesting, and the canyon got pretty narrow. We saw three female bighorn sheep near/on the trail and waited for them to move off (one photo shows them).
• comments: Then when we got to the far end of the skinny loop, the trail climbed up the wall of the canyon, and we spent most of the rest of the hike on the canyon wall looking down. A little thrill from the exposure, but if you were paying attention, it wasn't dangerous. It reminded me of the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park, except we saw ZERO other people the whole time. Excellent views!

 

[nancipants]

Amazing pictures! Looks like you're having a wonderful trip.

 

[avondale]

Aug. 13, 2025
Next part of South Dakota Hiking Trip

I wasn't sure that I was going to post every day, but there are a lot of good photos!

Wednesday (Aug. 13)

Hiking: summit of Black Elk Peak

• time: 2:56:45
• distance: 6.48 mi
• average pace: 27:16
• elevation gain: 1370 ft (corrected)
• comments: Black Elk Peak is the highest mountain in the US east of the Rocky Mountains, with an elevation of 7244 ft. This hike was reasonably scenic, but the point was to summit, so there was a lot of uphill. Reasonably moderate until the last 0.5 mi or so, and then it got really steep with what I call "giant steps". There is a fire tower on the peak, so the last bit was built up with stone and metal steps. Fantastic views!
• comments: This was a very busy hike, which was expected for a summit hike. A fun bit was that there are a lot if mica flakes in the rocks and dirt, so it looked like someone sprinkled a lot of fairy dust along the trail.

After we got back to our rental house and were cleaned up and relaxing, my husband saw two elk with impressive racks walk by our front window. (We are staying in Rapid City on a typical housing block with houses all next to each other for many blocks.) After they walked by, I went out on the front porch to get a photo. They walked two houses down, nibbling plants on the way. That's the end of the block, and they seemed to take a left turn in the last yard on the block. Elk are quite a bit bigger than the white-tailed deer back east.

 

[avondale]

Aug. 14, 2025
Next part of South Dakota Hiking Trip

I wasn't sure that I was going to post every day, but there are a lot of good photos!

Thursday (Aug. 14)
Hiking: Devil's Tower National Monument

• time: 2:46:27
• distance: 7.1 mi
• average pace: 23:26
• elevation gain: 1031 ft (corrected)
• comments: Devil's Tower itself is absolutely amazing! It is just this freakishly huge monolith in the middle of nowhere - it is 867 ft. tall! I love the geology of granite columns, so this was great. (We have also been to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, where there are similar columns.)
• comments: We strung together almost all of the trails in the monument for our hike - it was almost a 2-hour drive from Rapid City, so we were going to get our money's worth, so to speak. The scenery was nothing special compared to what we've seen in the last few days, except that the Tower is always there dominating things. One part of the trail did go through very red rocks and dirt, reminiscent of a lot of Utah. The innermost loop trail was paved and had lots of people, but the rest was pretty empty.
• comments: We did see climbers on the Tower in several places. I marked one in a photo and zoom-in. The bird was a yellow-shafted flicker, we found out with some Googling later.

 

[avondale]

Aug. 15, 2025
Next part of South Dakota Hiking Trip

I wasn't sure that I was going to post every day, but there are a lot of good photos!

Friday (Aug. 15)
We spent most of the day in Badlands National Park. An unusual thing about this park is that it does not have that many trails, especially longer trails. Instead, visitors are allowed to hike anywhere they want - off-trail. That is just so weird to me, since usually national parks don't want you walking off the trail in order to not destroy plants and habitat. The rock formations are so weird and steep in the Badlands that I really wouldn't be brave enough to strike out on my own for any distance, and in fact the hiking we did on some of the "trails" showed how slow and treacherous it could be.

Hiking: Window Trail, Badlands National Park

• time: 0:06:35
• distance: 0.21 mi
• average pace: 30:56
• elevation gain: 3.3 ft (uncorrected) - just for laughs
• comments: This was a easy-peasy stroll down a boardwalk to an overlook.
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Hiking: Notch Trail, Badlands National Park

• time: 0:44:59
• distance: 1.31 mi
• average pace: 34:23
• elevation gain: 143 ft (corrected)
• comments: This was a short but technical trail among the weird rock formations. Early on, there was a wooden ladder to get folks up a level in the rocks. There were enough people on the trail that this created a bottleneck.
• comments: Once up the ladder, a lot of the trail was on an exposed shelf edge, and then it had scrambling over rock formations. The trail led to a great overlook.
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Hiking: Door Trail, Badlands National Park

• time: 0:37:10
• distance: 1.35 mi
• average pace: 27:31
• elevation gain: 87 ft (corrected)
• comments: The first part of this trail was on a boardwalk and then the rest was walking over the really weird, knobby, rocky landscape. The trail ended at a great viewpoint. the landscape was just surreal.
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Hiking: Medicine Loop and Castle Trails, Badlands National Park

• time: 1:22:13
• distance: 3.99 mi
• average pace: 20:37
• elevation gain: 102 ft (corrected)
• comments: The first part of this loop was mostly through prairie with views of the rock formations farther away. In the second part of the loop, we got much closer to and wandered through some of the rock formations.
• comments: Fortunately this hike was pretty flat because it was HOT and after a week of hiking, my legs are getting tired.
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After all of the hikes, we went to Minuteman Missile National Historic Site (part of the National Parks). The main museum has a lot of info about the Minuteman missiles, the cold war with Russia, and the chain of command that would be needed to launch nuclear missiles. Then we went to a second site where they have preserved a control room from a past Minuteman II Missile site - only to find out you can't see it without a guided tour (which we did not have). Then we went to a third site where they have a "training" Minuteman II Missile still in its silo - it is glassed over, and you can look down into it.

Maybe kind of an odd thing to visit, but we'll probably never be back to South Dakota to visit it again, so if it was interesting to it, why not. Also, they had in the first museum the Dominoes pizza box cover spoof that you can see at the top of the NPS site (if it shows the same images every time): https://www.nps.gov/mimi/index.htm

I don't know why my photo is displaying upside down - it is correct when I look at it in a viewer.




We are flying home tomorrow! Then we're going to need rest from our vacation, LOL!