Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

When Jay was here we hiked the Little Devil’s Tower trail in Custer State Park. One of the other trails we could have hiked was the one that would have brought us to Harney Peak. We ended up having a wonderful time with Jay and Jesse and I agreed that we would hike up to Harney Peak the next time we had a chance.

He proclaimed on Friday night that we were going to hike Harney in the morning. I said sure, why not? The next morning we had our coffee and breakfast and loaded up our backpack with snacks to keep us going as we hiked. Harney Peak is the highest point east of the Rockies all the way until you get to Europe. It has an elevation of 7242 feet. Since we are already at a pretty high altitude you end up with about a thousand feet of gain as you travel up to the watch tower at the top. It used to be used to watch for wild fires, now it is just a great place to rest, eat lunch and take in the amazing views from the top.

We started at the same parking lot we were in with Jay the week before but this time we took Trail #9 to Harney. There was a really nice bench right at the trailhead with a beautiful engraving. I snapped a few pictures and we were off!

Some parts of this trail are very steep and we stopped often to catch our breath and take in the sights while we sipped our water. At one point we had to stop and fill out a little tag to attach to our bag were we declared the number of people, stock and dogs in our party (stock… like livestock?). We filled it out and kept hiking along. It was a great day for it, not too warm, not too cold.

As we got closer to the top it was cooler and the views were amazing. You could see so far. We had to climb under this rock formation and up these see through steps to get to the watch tower. I was not excited about the see through steps. I am afraid of heights and it was all a bit too high up but I made it and promptly sat down on a rock while Jesse went up to the railing and looked out. I stayed away from that particular view. Jesse also went to the very top of the watch tower. Again I was good on the lower level.

We found a nice rock and had something to eat with the many other people that were there doing the same thing. It was cool up there and we even had a small bit of rainfall while we were up there. Jesse went out to explore the area a bit more (and get some pictures of the mountain goat) while I sat back and people watched. It amazes me how brave little kids can be. They just bounced from rock to rock with not a care in the world. There was also this larger tour group maybe that were sharing their trail mix with the small herd of chipmunks that were running all around. Jesse started to make me nervous when he was standing up on some very high rock so I sent him a GET BACK HERE!!! text message and we started our decent. As we hiked down we realized that we could still see the tower when we looked up. It was amazing to see how far we had hiked.

Obviously going down the hill was much faster than going up and we had pretty good timing since we could here rumbles of thunder in the distance. But we really enjoyed ourselves. It was a great hike and we rewarded our hard physical effort with the Rapid City Art and Wine Festival!

The Art and Wine Festival had a bunch of crafty vendors selling their wares and a few South Dakota wineries offering tastings. We had already tried Firehouse Winery, Prairie Berry Winery and Naked Winery so we used one of our 5 drink tickets at the Belle Joli’ Winery booth. They had this amazing sparkling moscato that tasted so good. It was great summer wine. We made a mental note to go there one day and buy a bottle. It was good size pour too! We walked around and tried some others. Some people let us keep our tickets and this one booth we were served by someone who said that she was just filling in and it seemed like she had tried as many as she served…hehe.. we ended up walking away from there with full glasses! We eventually went to find some dinner at an Irish Pub.

It was a wonderful end to another great day here in South Dakota. We really do work for the weekends, when we get to go out and enjoy the sites and activities here in Rapid City, and nearby areas. We still have so much more to see I hope we can pack it all into the few months!

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