Day 17: Gillette to Sundance

What a nice birthday treat - an interesting and beautiful 75 mile ride.  Once again we were on U.S. Highway 14 for the entire day.  Leaving Gillette in the early morning cold was the interesting part - not the beautiful part.  Paralleling us on our the left for mile after mile were rail cars loaded with coal - some were sitting, but many others were on the move pulled by powerful engines. And paralleling us on our right for mile after mile were hundreds of sections of pipe ready to be placed in the ground to create a new pipeline to transport natural gas or oil ( I did some research online, but could not identify the specific project - there are actually numerous pipeline projects going on in the Gillette area).  The Gillette area is truly one of the major energy hubs in the U.S., if not the world.

The beautiful part started about 20 miles outside of Gillette and continued for the remainder of the day. Rolling hills dotted with cattle, antelope, and the occasional deer.  I took it really easy all morning, riding at a comfortable pace with Dan, a UBS financial advisor from New Jersey, and CD, a pediatric surgeon from Charleston.  We stopped for a roadside lunch beside the Belle Fourche River where the group had a little birthday celebration for me complete with a balloon.

For those of us not doing the optional 13 mile side trip to Devil's Tower there were only 23 miles between us and the hotel to cover after lunch. ( Note, I'm saving those extra 13 miles for my ride from Portland to Yarmouth at the end of the trip. )  For those of you disappointed that I did not go take pictures of Devil's Tower, here is one I took this past May when Jan and I drove across Wyoming - I can assure you that the tower has not changed much in the past few months.

There were two tough climbs after lunch so I ended up soloing most of the time into Sundance.  Here's a picture looking down toward Sundance as I began the final long descent into town.

I arrived in Sundance about 1pm and have had the luxury of an entire afternoon to take it easy.  I took a short walk around the town (it's a small town so there is no such thing as a long walk around town) and located an ice cream shop - but unfortunately it didn't open until 4pm.  It's an interesting little town which seems to cater to bikers (the kind with motors and leather - not spandex). 

The town is named for the Sun Dance ceremony practiced by several Native American Indian tribes. It became more widely known when Harry Longabaugh, an outlaw and member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, acquired the name of the Sundance Kid after being released from the town jail in 1888.  Of course it was really the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", with Robert Redford playing Harry Longabaugh, that made it famous - with Redford then naming the Sundance Ski Resort in Utah and the Sundance Film Festival after the character he played.  

Tomorrow I will do my first big bike ride as a septuagenarian (look that one up) and it's a tough one - 105 miles with 6200 feet of climbing through the Black Hills region.  However, I am really looking forward to it - a lot of important U.S. history took place here in the late 1800's and I also have a lot of family history in this area.  Of course I'm also looking forward to the end of tomorrow's ride in Rapid City because that means "REST DAY" which will be greatly welcomed by all of us.

Steve