Thursday, 9-6-18. We started the day with breakfast at the Mill Iron restaurant in Whitewood.
We both had one of their specialties, a pastie, or as it's more commonly spelled around here, pasty. It's pastry dough wrapped around a filling of meat and potatoes. There are breakfast versions filled with ham, cheese, potato, and egg.
Here's a picture, not mine but found on the net.
After breakfast we drove to Sturgis to see if there had been any work done building the track for the races on Friday and Saturday. We didn't notice anything, so we took to the hills. We rode Vanocker Canyon, Nemo road to Johnson Siding, over to 385 and down to the Pactola Lake reservoir.
There was someone swimming in the lake.
John wanted to visit some friends of his in Hot Springs, the Whitakers. They used to have a jewelry store in Hill City, but they closed it and moved down to Hot Springs. They still do some gold and silver jewelry, but have expanded their line to include antiques, rocks, minerals, and gems. They're an interesting couple, they live off the power grid and power their shop and home with solar.
We had a late lunch/early dinner in Hot Springs, then we headed back north on 79 and cut west on 36. We took 16A, aka Iron Mountain Road, north bound. I think that's the most scenic way to travel it. You get to see Mt. Rushmore ahead of you as you drive through two of the tunnels. There's also less traffic as everyone seems to ride from Keystone south.
A few pics from 16A. Sorry about the out of frame shot of the Presidents, but it was a long way off and I couldn't see to frame it...
We made it back to camp and waited for John's friends, Kathy and Dean, to arrive. They stayed in the cabin next to us.
