First, let me thank everyone who has posted comments on the blog. Comments are the only way I can see who is following. Keep them coming!
     This morning we left Wall, SD located right outside the Pinnacles Entrance of Badlands National Park . The main way to visit is to follow a 25 mile road through the park called Badlands Loop Road. It winds in and out of the formations and canyons with many scenic outlooks along the way. There are several hiking trails, both easy and strenuous, both long and short. Just off the Pinnacles Entrance is a 5 mile gravel road called Sage Creek Rim Road that leads to Roberts Prairie Dog Town which is home for thousands of prairie dogs. We spoke to the ranger, and she said that with all the rains recently, the road had washed out and was closed. She told us that if we went back about 4 miles, we could follow a paved road for several miles and then a couple of miles of gravel and dirt roads and get to the other side of Sage Creek Rim Road. At first, we decided not to go, but by the first overlook, we realized it was early, so why not?
     So off we went in search of prairie dogs. The paved roads are fine, but gravel and dirt roads are a little treacherous for a motorcycle. We took it slow, and except for a few spots with "wash-boarding", it wasn't too bad . We couldn't get all the was to Prairie Dog Town, as the road was closed from this side also, but we got close enough to see the prairie dogs. Jody was thrilled, and thanks to the telephoto lense, I was able to get some pretty good pictures.
     Now the two things they warn you about Badlands National Park is that they don't have a lot of water, and they don't have a lot of bathrooms. By the time we got to the third scenic overlook, it became apparent that Jody wasn't going to make it the entire distance without a bathroom break, and I wasn't going to get any good GoPro camera video footage if we had to constantly stop at every scenic overlook. So we made a command decision to ride continuously to the Fossil Trail area about 20 miles away with the GoPro recording the entire trip, Then we would turn around and get back to where we started with the GoPro recording the trip back in the other direction. It took about 30 minutes each way, and I will try to post some short clips from the trip in the next day or so . BTW, we started on the third overlook, and returned to the second overlook and noticed there was a restroom on the second overlook that was not on the map. Oh well, at least we got some good video!
     On the way back, we stopped at almost every scenic overlook, and even just pulled over to the side of the road to take some pictures when the sites were interesting. The pictures are really spectacular, but they really can't do justice to actually being there and seeing it all up close. We did have a couple of incidents along the way. The first, is when we pulled off to the side where there was no guard rail, Didn't think much about it until I went to get back on the bike and realized that just off the pavement was a straight down drop of many hundreds of feet. I let Jody wait to get back on, mounted the bike from he left side (right side was facing the cliff) and rolled the bike downhill several feet before having Jody get back on. There was no real danger, but if in the course of mounting the bike we had tipped over to the right, we would have gone over the cliff . Needless to say, lesson learned, I paid much more attention to where I was before letting down the kickstand.
     The second incident happened when we stopped again on the side of the road, only this time we were facing a little downhill. I had left the bike in neutral when we got off, and while we were taking pictures it rolled forward a little and collapsed the kickstand. The bike went over on its left side. Luckily it is a Goldwing, so it didn't fall far. Within seconds, 2 cars came by to help us get the bike back upright. Nothing damaged more than my pride.
     As we were continuing along, taking more pictures at more scenic overlooks, the weather was getting even warmer. We started with jackets and sweatshirts in the morning, when the temperature was in the 60's, but by afternoon it was in the mid 70's we were in t-shirts and contemplating putting on shorts to go hiking.
    Speaking of hiking, we technically went on 4 trails, though 3 were pretty easy, and the 4th was difficult but short . The first was Fossil Trail, barely a trail at all as it was fully done with planking to make it wheelchair accessible. The second hike we did was the Saddle Pass Trail. It wasn't that long, about a quarter mile, it was just straight up! The path was very steep, and not well marked, but you actually got to climb among the formations and it was very fun, if exhausting. I was surprised, because I usually have a fear of heights, but for some reason, none of the heights or depths of the Badlands bothered me.
     By this time we had reached the Visitors Center where we watched the obligatory 20 minute video, got our national Park Passport stamped, and bought the obligatory t-shirt. It had been hot on the previous climb, so the air conditioning felt great. It was getting close to 2:00 and we still had to drive to Lead, SD to our hotel a couple of hours away, so we had to rethink our hiking strategy. We were going to do the Notch Trail and the Window Trail hike. But the Notch Trail was 1.5 miles, and was expected to take over an hour, and the Window Trail was short and would only take 10 minutes . We decided to drop the Notch Trail and go for the Window Trail, and when we got there, the Door Trail was right next door so we did them both.
     So now we've done all we're gonna do in Badlands National Park, so it's off to the hotel. The temperature began to drop, and the clouds began to look more ominous as we followed SD-377S to SD-44W out of the park. We were looking for a place to pull over to put on a little warmer clothing and even our rain suits, but nothing. There wasn't a pull-over or a gas station to be seen for the next 70 miles. The rain was spotty, off an on, and it was getting even colder, down into the 60's, Finally, as we got close to Rapid City, we were able to find a gas station and gas up, dress up, and put on our rain suits. Good thing, because the rain would start and stop just enough to be annoying all the way to the hotel.
      Once we got on SD-44W west of Rapid City, the road and scenery changed dramatically again. We were now in the Black Hills National Forest and even with a little rain, the mountain scenery and roads were awesome! We went up and down several mountains along the way continuing north on US-385N until we reached Lead, SD . There was even a point as we drove up one of the larger mountains on US-385N, we encountered some of the last vestiges of a snowstorm that had passed this way a couple of weeks ago. The temperature was 61 degrees, but there was still a little snow on the sides of the road, I wish there was somewhere to pull over so we could have taken a picture.
     We had been wondering why the Garmin had a 20 minute difference than what we expected to take to get to Lead. We were about to find out. It seems that while the Spearfish Canyon Lodge may have an address technically in Lead, it is actually about 20 minutes west up and down a few more mountains. We were getting nervous as the Garmin got a little lost passing through some little mountain town. It had us detour up and down some really scarey steep streets to get back on the US-85S. The roads were so steep, it seemed too dangerous to stop and figure out where we were, so I just kept going until we got back on track.
     And then we made the turn onto US-14AW, just a beautiful scenic road. Mountains on the right, a stream on the left, and up and down, twist and turn the whole way until we came upon the Spearfish Canyon Lodge. Beautiful mountain lodge, mostly for winter ski use, but much cheaper out of season. There were snowmobiles covered in the parking lot, Outdoor hot tubs on the second floor, and the place just looked great. The inside looked as nice as the outside and we decided this was as good a place as any to take an extra day to relax. So tomorrow, we don't have any really big plans. We'll probably go into Spearfish - they have a UPS store, and we need to ship back some of our excess stuff so we have room to buy more. So maybe we'll just sleep in!

240.2 miles today
3497.9 miles total

4.362 gallons today
87.402 gallons total