This Is the Crown Jewel of American Bike Paths! (SUV Camping/Vanlife Adventures)

Good morning everyone. I am in an area that I don't visit very often and I'm doing a thing that I don't do very often. I'm on Main Street in the Old West town of Deadwood, South Dakota. I'm in the Black Hills, kind of at the northern end of the Black Hills in western South Dakota. Got a lot of cool old buildings along Main Street here. Deadwood of course was home to famous Wild West figures like Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. And I'm actually at a spot right now that relates to Wild Bill. This spot along Main Street here is the site of the capture of the assassin, the guy who shot Wild Bill Hickok, August 2nd, 1876. Wild Bill offended that guy during a poker game and then the next day that guy came and shot Wild Bill. He tried to escape. He didn't get very far. He was captured and then he was, I think he was hanged the next year. Anyway, I'm in town here starting here on this bike. I'm here to do a 109 mile bike ride called the Mickelson Trail. The actual start of the trail is a little ways south of town here so let's ride over there and I'll fill you in a little bit. And here it is. This is the trailhead in Deadwood. This is the northern terminus of the trail. The trail goes off to the south here. Looking back in the other direction, this is the Main Street of Deadwood area. I have been to this area before and I'll put some videos down below if you want to see more of Deadwood and more of the Black Hills. And let me show you my bike here. So as I mentioned, the Mickelson Trail is 109 miles long. You could do that in a day. I'm going to be doing that in two days. And so in here, in this dry bag that I just strapped to the rack on the back of my bike, I have camping gear. So I have a tent and sleeping bag and everything in there. Got a few water bottles. I have a frame bag here that I got off of Amazon. I have a little top tube bag here and then I have a, I guess a handlebar bag coming off the front. So this has my camera gear in it. This has my wallet and keys and a battery bank and my phone will go in there. This has food and snacks in it. Then this has, again, mostly camping gear and then just various other incidentals like toiletries and that sort of thing. This bike is a Trek 820. This is a low end. I think this is their entry level mountain bike. I bought it used a few years ago. It's about a 10 year old bike. It's nothing fancy. And away we go. It is 1010 in the morning. I've been up since about 515. I got up at daybreak. And I camped last night near the southern end of the trail and then I drove there this morning and I got all my gear ready and then I hired a shuttle company to take me to this end of the trail. So my car, the RAV4, is parked at the southern terminus. I'll get there tomorrow late sometime. And it was about a two hour drive in the shuttle van back to here, to the starting trailhead here in Deadwood. And that cost, I think it was $175 if you pay with cash and then $183 or $185 if you pay by card. Mile 0.1. Alright. Now I am not a cyclist. I did not train for this. This is basically me doing a 100 mile long bike trail off the couch. But this is a pretty mild trail as far as the steepness goes. The grade. And that's because this is a rail trail. This used to be a train track. A railroad bed. And trains obviously don't go up super steep or down super steep hills. And so it's a pretty mild grade as I understand it. And when I was doing research for this trip and planning it, I saw several places call it the best rail trail in America. And I've ridden a handful of rail trails but never one this long. I've never done a multi-day rail trail trip. So it should be a lot of fun. Well, I've been biking for a little over an hour and it's been great. It's been so peaceful. So nice. Especially in sections that are away from the highway, away from the road like this. It's just great. Great. Riding. I've covered about six and a half miles. I think it was 6.4. And it's been almost entirely uphill. I've gained nearly a thousand feet of elevation. So the going has been slow on this section but that's because it is all uphill. There are little benches like this along the trail in between parks and trailheads and everything and check out the view from here. It's a little bit hard to see through the trees but I'm kind of on the side of a mountain right now and you can see other mountain sides off in the distance there. Just a really beautiful stretch of trail. Also there are these mile markers. I don't know if they're every single mile. Like right now it says 102. And I started at mile marker 109 I think. And so it's a nice easy way to keep up with your progress. I'm at one of the, I don't know, dozen or so trailheads that the trail goes through and along. And each one has different amenities. This one has a pit toilet right here. And then right here is a little pillar of bike tools. Like that's a bike pump right there. Then there are various other tools along with it. And we've got a park bench. Then you saw me get some water here from the cistern. Nice, fresh, cool water. And then a little shade structure. Here's a closer look at the little bike tool area. You can see a variety of little tools here. Screwdrivers, allen wrenches, regular wrenches, little hex key, little allen wrench set, various other tools. And yeah, this is a pump here. And then the thing itself is a bike stand. You can put your bike on it if you need to do some mechanic work on it. I think I've made it to the top. I think this spot I can feel that I'm starting to go down now after many miles of going uphill. This nondescript stretch of trail here is the highest point on the entire trail. I've been biking for 2 hours 48 minutes. I've gone 15.09 miles. The elevation here is 6,232 feet. And the amount of elevation gain that I've struggled up through is 1,738 feet. Like I said, this is the highest point of the trail. You can ride the trail either way. You can go from north to south like I'm doing or from south to north. The reason I chose to do it this way, from north to south, is that in general you lose about 1,000 feet of elevation. I mean there are lots of ups and downs still but there's a little bit more downhill going from north to south than going the other way. It's a warm day. It's probably... It's in the 70s at least. It'll probably be higher. I'm making okay time. Not great but again this was, I think, some of the steepest stuff of the whole ride here and so it is what it is. I'm gonna have a snack here, drink some water, put some more sunscreen on. The next thing that I want to stop and see and show you guys is... I actually don't know how many miles away. 10, 15 miles away. I'll continue to film a little bit here and there but I won't really film again until I'm at that next thing that I want to see and show you. So I was just riding down the trail here and I saw this interesting building and a sign in front of it so I stopped and read the sign and check this out. So this old building here, this barn, has these strange circular metal, I guess, tiles on the roof. These are actually lids for buckets of cyanide and so back in the day when gold mining was a big deal in the Black Hills, the mines would use large quantities of cyanide for... I don't know what it was for exactly but something to do with the mining operations and wanting to be frugal and not wanting to let anything go to waste. People used the metal buckets or the metal lids of those buckets of cyanide as roofing material. Isn't that amazing? Cyanide for whatever virtues it has in terms of gold mining operations also is poison and so it's interesting that people use this as a material on their homes. I also just realized that the the walls of the building here have the same metal lids on them too. So it's just one more quirky little thing to see along the way in the beautiful Black Hills. Well I hope the camera survived that fall from the cistern. It fell a good three or four feet onto the ground so if the camera isn't focusing or if it's doing weird stuff I apologize but this is the best we can do right now. I've gone 35 miles and I've been biking for five and a half hours and it's time for a break. I'm gonna take a break for maybe half an hour. I found this nice little shaded spot here that also happens to be a point of historical interest. Here we have an itty bitty little cemetery with three graves in it. We have this big one here and then two small ones and as the sign here says, a mother and her two small children passed away here at their home in 1919 from influenza. Their names are unknown. Isn't that terrible? How can it be that no one knew their names? I mean what tragic story is behind that? How can it be that a family lived here and died here and no one knew who they were? That's just tragic. I don't think that's an especially rare story though when it comes to the early populating of the West. I mean 1919 wasn't like super early in the history of this area. I think George Custer, of Custer's Last Stand fame, I think he and his soldiers were the first white people to explore this area. This area was long home to, I think, Lakota Native Americans. These were their hunting grounds and these were, you know, special sacred places this mountain range was. But then Custer and his group came here in 1874, I want to say. And so, I mean, 1919 isn't too far past that. But yeah, Custer's group was the first non-Native American group to explore this area and they found gold here. It was one of Custer's men that discovered gold in what is now near the town of Custer which is, I think I'll get to tomorrow or maybe today, I'm going to be going through the town of Custer at some point and we'll see. We'll take a look at that creek where gold was originally found. But for now, I'm going to relax here. My thighs are killing me. You know, I probably should have trained a little bit. I probably should have worked my way up to biking 100 miles in a day. I have, or in two days, I have about 20 miles left to bike today. And it's going to be going to be painful but it's a beautiful place. Having a great time. But I'm looking forward to a snack and some R&R here. Okay, well, it's a couple hours later, two, three hours later. I don't know how much later it is but it is later. It's about 6.30 and I'm in the biggest town that I've been through since Deadwood. It's called Hill City. There's one thing that I want to see. Actually, I can see it right here. It is the world's largest Smokey the Bear. I thought that was kind of neat. Kind of a fun little roadside attraction. So we're going to go see that and then I want to go get a hamburger because I'm hungry. So here is Smokey. This is a chainsaw art store, I think. You can buy chainsaw art here. It's called Dahl's Chainsaw Art. And this guy's about 30 feet tall. He's got a shovel here and everything. That's pretty neat. That's actually surprisingly impressive. That's pretty darn neat. But I'm on a mission. I gotta find a burger. I don't have a ton of daylight left. I have, like, two hours of daylight left. I still have five or six miles left to bike and I need to find a campsite. So let's go find some dinner. This is a busy place. This is a popular town. A lot of people. A lot of cars. I'm here late enough in the day that a couple things are closed and I'm debating between just going to Dairy Queen, which I'm not super excited about, and going to, like, a real restaurant that might have, kind of, a longer wait. I don't know. Oh yeah. Lots of people out. You know what? There are... There are a lot of people here. I've passed a couple of restaurants. Lots of people sitting outside at each one. I think I'm just gonna go to Dairy Queen. I think calories are what I need right now. So let me find Dairy Queen. I'll go sit somewhere quiet and enjoy it as far as Dairy Queen can be enjoyed. Welcome to camp. It's not a great campsite. It's kind of sloping and there are lots of bumps. The surface here is uneven. But you know what? It's the first campsite I came to. And I've actually stayed at this campsite before. About two and a half, three years ago. The last time I was in the Black Hills, I camped here and I fished this creek that's right next to the... Right next to the campsite. Let me show it to you. If I remember right, there are lots of little brook trout in here. I think... I think we just saw one jump. Did you see that? Anyway. Pretty little creek. Pretty area. It's kind of a meadow here. I'll fly the drone in the morning and give you guys an aerial view. But for now, I just want to get the tent up and relax. And I've been recording my progress today using the Gaia GPS app on my phone. And I went 57.49 miles, so 57 and a half miles, over 10 hours, 19 minutes, with 3,095 feet of elevation gain. Long day. I'm exhausted. Let's set up camp. Got my tent. This is a little one-person tent, sleeping bag, and my sleeping pad, or my camp mattress. And by the way, this is National Forest Land. I'm about a mile from the actual Mickelson Trail. I just saw that this area was about halfway through the hike. Not hike. The bike ride. And I saw that it was National Forest Land, so public land, meaning dispersed camping is allowed anywhere here. And so I went up this little side road, and this was the first campsite, and it was open. And it just so happened to be the one that I camped at a couple years back. And here's the finished result. This is camp. I've stripped the bike of everything that I'll need tonight. And I've taken everything out of the dry bag that I need, also, and put that all inside the tent. This is a 50 liter dry bag, this orange one, and it's bigger than what I needed for this trip, but it's what I already had, so that's why we're using it here. And this tent is awesome. This is a little one-man tent, like I said, and it's just super lightweight. I don't remember the name of it. It's by a company called Big Sky, I believe, but I don't remember the model. I'll put a link to it down below. Very light tent. Great, great tent. And that'll do it for tonight. Long day, guys. Long, long day. Really fun adventure, though. I'm really happy to be doing this. I've been wanting to do this for years. I've wanted to bike the Mickelson Trail for years, and even this season, you know, I originally wanted to do it, like, a month ago, but bad weather and various other things got in the way, and so I'm happy to finally be here, and I'm really excited for what I have planned for tomorrow morning. So at 9 a.m., I have a reservation to do something really, really cool that I've never done before, and I think you guys are gonna enjoy it also. So let me relax for the night, and I'll see you guys again bright and early in the morning. Good morning, everyone. It's a beautiful morning here, and I slept pretty well, all things considered. Got about seven hours of sleep, and, you know, there was some tossing and turning, but overall, I slept pretty well, all things considered. I don't usually sleep well in tents, and so I'm happy that I was able to sleep as well as I did. And I'm excited to start the day today. Let's get going. Let's pack up the tent, and I'll meet you guys back out on the Mickelson Trail. So this is what I have scheduled for this morning. I'm riding a helicopter. I'm going for a helicopter sightseeing tour, basically. So you've probably, I mean, undoubtedly, you know what Mount Rushmore is. There's another giant statue underway in the Black Hills, and it's the Crazy Horse Memorial. When it's completed, it'll be the second largest statue in the world, but it's been under construction for 75 years, and it's not anywhere near being finished. And so I'm taking a helicopter tour to get a closer look at Crazy Horse, which is kind of just over this ridge here. And Crazy Horse, of course, was a Native American leader in the mid to late 1800s. He fought at the Fetterman Fight and the Battle of Little Bighorn, both of which I've been to. I'll put links to those down below if I can find them. And so I'm excited. I've never been in a helicopter before, and I'm looking forward to it. Well, that was awesome. I had a great time. That was super cool. Again, never been in a helicopter before. Not sure if I ever will be again. I thought I would splurge for that experience for one time. A ticket for one person was like $120, I think. But because when I got there, there was no one else that was going to be flying at the same time, I had to buy two tickets. There's a two-person minimum for each flight, and so it was $245 or something like that. It was worth it, though. That was awesome. I'll talk a little bit more about it in a little bit, but I want to eat my food while it's still hot. So I rode the five miles or so from the helicopter place to the town of Custer, South Dakota, and I got a burger. This is a buffalo burger with some fries and a Pepsi here. I finally got the burger that I was craving yesterday, so I'm going to enjoy this, and then we'll catch up a little bit. Alright, after a satisfying buffalo burger, I'm ready to tackle the trail again, but first I wanted to just mention a couple other things about the helicopter ride. So the one that I did basically went to and then like around Crazy Horse, the Crazy Horse Memorial. They have other ones that do Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore. They have other ones that just do Mount Rushmore. I think they have a couple other options, too. And the pilot said that she does like 20 to 30 of those flights a day, and it was really cool being up there. I wonder if it gets old after 20 or 30 times, though. She said that last year on the 4th of July, they did 100 helicopter flights. Just unbelievable. But it was really cool being in such a small little aircraft. I've never been in anything that small before that flies, and it was just a unique experience. I was so close to the glass and everything. I was sitting up in front next to the pilot and just had a great time. Super expensive, but totally worth it. And I mentioned yesterday that gold was found in the Black Hills in Custer, and I'm in Custer now. And the creek is called French Creek. It's just like a block over that way. We'll go take a look at that in a second. But this monument right here where I had my lunch at this little park just right on the main drag here in Custer is dedicated to the guy who found the gold. Dedicated to the memory of Horace N. Ross, discoverer of gold in the Black Hills at Custer, South Dakota, July 27, 1874. And we have a little tower here crowned by a gold pan and a pickaxe and a shovel. And completely unrelated to finding gold in the Black Hills, my glasses... I don't know if you can see this, but my glasses are ruined. The reflective film on the outside is just totally messed up right now. I left these out overnight. They were sitting on the back rack of the bike here. And when I wiped... When I grabbed these this morning to wipe off the dew, it just took off a lot of that reflective coating. So, I mean, they're still wearable, but they look great. And looking through them also isn't great. Luckily I have another pair in my car, but we have about, I don't know, like 40 miles on the trail, which is over here, to get back to the car. So it looks like I'll be wearing messed up glasses all day here. Okay, and this unassuming little creek is French Creek. I'm at French Creek Park picnic area. Nice little park with a nice little creek running alongside it. Really not much of a creek, but it's notable for its place in history. And the plan now is to just ride. There's not a whole lot... I mean, there are other things I could see and do in this area, but I'm just gonna go see and do them on another day, on another time when I have the car. It's just much easier to get around. For now, I just want to ride the trail itself. So let's do that. I'm gonna ride... Again, I don't know exactly how far it is to my car. Maybe 40, 45 miles, somewhere in there. And I'm not gonna film it with this camera. I'm gonna put the GoPro on my helmet and then just give you guys some time-lapse footage so you can see what the trail is like, get an idea of what the trail area is like. And then there is one little stop I want to make along the way. One little kind of folk art oddity that we'll take a look at and then apart from that, we're just gonna head straight to the car. 11 miles now down the mountain, down the hill from Custer. I'm at the little piece of folk art. It's just a pile of bicycles. Apparently this pile was started in the 80s and it's grown to include several hundred bikes at this point. There's a little path that loops through the pile of bikes here. It looks like they're all held together with wire. Yeah, the bikes are kind of wired on each other, wired to each other. Huh. Weird. Pretty neat though. I've never seen anything quite like this. And like I said, it was all basically downhill to here and I think it's mostly more or less downhill from here to the end. There might be little ups and downs but I think predominantly we're going down and I'm excited about that. I'm not sure how many miles I have left. I'm guessing somewhere in the 30-35 mile range. It is 140 so I've got plenty of daylight. I should be able to make it back to the car before it gets dark but I guess you never know. You never know if I'll get a flat tire or suddenly feel sick or, you know, whatever. Things happen. But barring anything crazy I should be able to make it back to the car while there's still some daylight. Alright guys. I've made it to the sleepy little town of Edgemont. This is where the end of the trail is. This is where the southern terminus of the Mickelson Trail is. And as you can see here, clearly I'm not on trail anymore. The last mile or so of the official Mickelson Trail is just on streets through the town here. This is an awesome old Land Cruiser. I like that. It's like from the 80s. Anyway, this is Edgemont. The end of the trail is up there. I can see it. There's a city park that marks the southern terminus of the trail. Let's cross the street. I can see the the Route 4 right there. And here's the park right next to the town museum. The last little bit of the trail here. Last 50 feet of the trail and here we go. George S. Mickelson Trailhead. There is a trail pass required, by the way. I don't think I mentioned that. It's $4 a day per person or $15 a year. I paid the $15 a year because, you know, why not? It's a cool little park. It's got a lot of stuff in it. It's pretty packed with little things to see and do. There are some cannons over here. Some big guns. There's a piece of petrified wood. A petrified tree that was found in the area. Got a train car. So the the train line that the Mickelson Trail follows, I think it was called this, or this was at least part of it, the Burlington Northern Railroad. And it ran until 1986, I believe, and then the Mickelson Trail was finished in 1998. And then we have a pretty little covered bridge. This is apparently the only covered bridge in the northern Great Plains. There's a pond here and the bridge goes out to an island in the pond. And then as far as stats go for the day here, I rode 54.24 miles plus the, like, two miles from my campsite to the helicopter place. Total time, 7 hours 14 minutes with only 700 feet of elevation gain. And I think yesterday it was 3,000 something and so, yeah, today definitely easier. It is 5.34 so I finished today, you know, with a few hours of daylight to spare. It's just awesome. So what are my thoughts of the Mickelson Trail? I loved it. I had a great time. For me, the appeal was the trail itself. The appeal was riding on my bike for two days. But if you want to stop and see more things along the way, you certainly could. You could do it in three days, four days, a week. You could walk it. I think horses are allowed on it. I saw a ton of people on e-bikes. I think probably 80% of the people that I saw, especially yesterday, were on e-bikes. I was silently cursing them as I was struggling up some of the uphills yesterday. But yeah, there are lots of places around here where you can rent e-bikes so if that interests you, you could only ride a section of it if you wanted. I think that scenery-wise, yesterday was probably a little bit better. More trees, more kind of higher mountain views, more streams and rivers. But today was really pretty too, like coming down out of the mountains. So this town, Edgemont, is kind of at the southern end of the Black Hills. It's out of the mountains a little bit. And coming down was just really pretty and I had a great time. And I hope you guys enjoyed it too. Like I said, I have a few hours of daylight left so I'm gonna stop recording and go find something tasty to eat and go find a campsite higher up in the mountains, higher up in the Black Hills. It'll be a little bit cooler tonight. But let me know what you think. Let me know if you have any questions about the trail. I'll do my best to answer them. Let me know what your favorite part was. I'll see you in the next one. Be sure to check out Adventure Know How, my new site, where you can gain access to a map of all of my free campsites, plus monthly bonus videos that you won't find anywhere else. Learn more at AdventureKnowHow.com. And for links to everything else SUV RVing related, visit SUVRVing.com. Links to these sites and more will be in the video description.