Hiking in the Black Hills

Ok, so we actually went hiking a few weeks ago and I'm only writing about it now, but better late than never, right? I have been slacking on this blog, but I will be better about it, I promise!

It's really easy to find places to hike right here near our house which we are very grateful for as our kids love to be outside. When we asked Caiden what he wanted to do one Saturday, he said, "take a walk in the forest." I think he wanted to go and try to find Smokey the Bear because he knows he lives somewhere in the Forest. But we decided instead to go check out some waterfalls at Roughlock Falls. "Roughlock" comes from back in the days of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok and describes the difficult travel through Spearfish Canyon. They would "roughlock" the wheels of their wagon with logs or chains so they would not turn. They would then hitch the horses to the rear of the wagon and slowly slide down the slopes. There's a little history for you even! It is considered one of the most beautiful locations in the Black Hills and judging by how many people were there, a lot of people think this. The last scenes of the movie "Dancing with Wolves" was even filmed there. It was really neat to see the waterfalls and walk along the paths and trails around the falls. The kids had a great time finding birds and bugs and rocks to climb onto.

After some time at the falls, we headed back down Spearfish Canyon and stopped at Savoy to try out the "76 Trail." It's name comes from the 1876 Gold Rush and it was a quite a bit steeper than what we were used to, but the kids did really well. Chloe of course had to do everything herself so I stayed behind with her and Chris and Caiden zoomed up the trail pretty quickly. We made it halfway up (3/4 quarters of a mile) and the kids were pretty tired and we came to a sign that said the next half was even steeper and there was a lot of loose rocks on the "trail" so we decided that the halfway point was the end for us. The kids found a deer print on the way down and thought was was really neat. Caiden really liked how high up we were and could look down at everything.

After getting back down, we asked the kids where they wanted to go eat lunch and they both chimed in with "rice and noodles" so it was off to the Chinese buffet for some lunch! Hiking and Chinese - could the day be any better?! :)