Black Hills Trip - Day 4

Sunday, June 27th:  Spearfish, SD to Hill City, SD

Another hotel, another free continental breakfast...  Off to Rapid City where we wanted to get a tour at the Black Hills Gold Factory Outlet store.  The tour was to show you how they design and make various Black Hills Gold jewlery.  Unfortunately, the literature made no mention of the fact there were no tours on weekends and holidays.  Grrrrr.  The sales person seemed to not really care when we voiced our disappointment that the literature didn't mention there were no weekend tours.  Instead, she offered to have us watch a 7 minute video on the process, which wasn't really the equivalent of a tour, but oh well.  Diane purchased a ring and a necklace here and we were off to the next stop.  A couple miles down the road we stopped at the Prairie Berry Winery.

As you can imagine, Nathan was a little bored.  So, he found a new friend (also bored) and they played chess.

The 3 adults proceeded to do some wine tasting.  We were helped by a very friendly Tasting Room Associate that made sure we were getting the most out of the experience.  After each getting to taste 5 wines (for free), we made our selections (listed below):

Phat Hogg Chardonnay 2008 — Our crisp, un-oaked, international award winning Chardonnay. Available Now.

 
 

 
Crab Apple -- Our wine is made from handpicked South Dakota crab apples. It is a delightful blend of tart and not-too-sweet. Available Now.
 
 
 

 
Red Ass Rhubarb— Our semi-sweet raspberry and rhubarb wine made from South Dakota grown rhubarb and ripe red raspberries. Available Now.
 
   

 
Blue Suede Shoes - A lush, sweet wine with deep bass undertones of fresh blueberries!  Sorry Sold Out until 2011. 
 
- We must have got the last bottle!!
 

We also decided to sign up for their wine club!  As a member of their Generation 5 wine club (Cellar Cru), we receive a 10% discount on all their wine (Yay, we can order off the internet and have it shipped to MN!).  We'll also receive 2 bottles of wine in each of the months of February, May and October.  We indicated we prefer the sweet and semi-sweet wines and we won't know the specific wine we get until the bottles arrive in the mail.

 

Next, we headed into Hill City where we ordered a pizza to go for lunch and walked across the street to the picnic tables at the 1880 Train station.  We had been playing our version of the license plate game, which was simply keeping track of the states we saw and betting on how many of the 50 states we'd see by the end of the trip.  Across the street from the pizza place, there it was - ALASKA!  One of the two states we didn't think we'd see.  Any bets on whether we saw Hawaii??  Keep checking back until the end of the trip to find out the exciting ending to this game!

 

After killing time wandering the streets of Hill City, it was time to board the 1880 Train. This train runs between Hill City and Keystone and back.  Roundtrip took 2hrs, 15 minutes.  Below are some pictures of the trip!

A fawn eating from her mother.  How Diane got this picture as the train was going by, I have no idea!!!

Hanging out the open air windows of the train car

According to the narrator on the train, the numbers on this barn have been dubbed "Lazy Two, Crazy Two" 

 Harney Peak (Highest point in SD at 7244 feet) 

 

A couple miles down the road was our hang out for the next two nights, Crooked Creek Campground & Resort.  We stayed in one of the cabins, which was basically like a stand alone hotel room. 

 

Nathan went for a dip in the onsite swimming pool and then we turned in for the night.  You'll need to ask Nathan about what "Oopsie-Poopsie" means and ask Diane why the letter "P" was missing from the pool sign (and how long it took for her to "get it").