I really am almost totally out of Travelogues to share with you, which heretofore had been my Thursday mainstay. Only a week ago the Triad was shivering in quite a chill, with 2 consecutive highs at just 36 degrees. At 4am the temperature spiked to 73 degrees at Piedmont Triad Airport, as we had been enjoying a complete temperature turn-around.
Such was the case for this posting. Mt. Coolidge sits amid the central Black Hills of southwest South Dakota, and has a gated 1-mile gravel road to the summit full of communications towers and powerlines. The gate is understandably locked for the winter...but here it was February 20-something in 2005...but instead of snow and arctic cold, it was 78 degrees the day I made the walk.
The two black specks ahead of me on the road were my two pups, then. With the road blocked and it totally being out of tourist season, we had the place to ourselves. The only mistake I made was not taking along much water...in that very dry air, I not only heated up but evaporated lots of water that I couldn't readily replace...but the Two Amigos and I budgeted what we had as we hiked, knowing there was water back in the car (I always carried a gallon for safe keeping).
It was easier said than done taking pictures and avoiding power lines, which were a dime a dozen, clustered tightly near the peak. I might also add these pictures came from an old digital camera (read small file size) and not my newer razor-sharp cameras; hence they don't enlarge much or well.
That area of South Dakota is prone to wildfires, and there are any number of scar burns throughout the arid, rocky landscape. The area around Mt. Coolidge was no exception.
The fire damage here was from years earlier...yet Nature, ever the resilient one, bounces back, and on occasion you can see some deer or Bighorn sheep grazing lazily away...
In that wonderful silence with only breezes in the pines or the rare lone vehicle on the highway below to break it, you look over the landscape and wonder what it all looked like before civilization arrived...where you would like to hike and explore at your leisure...the opportunities are rather limitless, even today...and especially out of tourist season.
And so we three lazily meandered along the road and around the summit, peering off into all directions, knowing this was a restful time of year for Nature...
..and we accordingly sauntered back down the wide-open and temporarily private road back to the waiting "K9 LIMO"...hoping that just maybe on the way back a Bighorn might let his or her presence be known.
Upper 70s in the Black Hills in February - how incongruously wonderful.
Such was the case for this posting. Mt. Coolidge sits amid the central Black Hills of southwest South Dakota, and has a gated 1-mile gravel road to the summit full of communications towers and powerlines. The gate is understandably locked for the winter...but here it was February 20-something in 2005...but instead of snow and arctic cold, it was 78 degrees the day I made the walk.
The two black specks ahead of me on the road were my two pups, then. With the road blocked and it totally being out of tourist season, we had the place to ourselves. The only mistake I made was not taking along much water...in that very dry air, I not only heated up but evaporated lots of water that I couldn't readily replace...but the Two Amigos and I budgeted what we had as we hiked, knowing there was water back in the car (I always carried a gallon for safe keeping).
It was easier said than done taking pictures and avoiding power lines, which were a dime a dozen, clustered tightly near the peak. I might also add these pictures came from an old digital camera (read small file size) and not my newer razor-sharp cameras; hence they don't enlarge much or well.
That area of South Dakota is prone to wildfires, and there are any number of scar burns throughout the arid, rocky landscape. The area around Mt. Coolidge was no exception.
The fire damage here was from years earlier...yet Nature, ever the resilient one, bounces back, and on occasion you can see some deer or Bighorn sheep grazing lazily away...
In that wonderful silence with only breezes in the pines or the rare lone vehicle on the highway below to break it, you look over the landscape and wonder what it all looked like before civilization arrived...where you would like to hike and explore at your leisure...the opportunities are rather limitless, even today...and especially out of tourist season.
And so we three lazily meandered along the road and around the summit, peering off into all directions, knowing this was a restful time of year for Nature...
..and we accordingly sauntered back down the wide-open and temporarily private road back to the waiting "K9 LIMO"...hoping that just maybe on the way back a Bighorn might let his or her presence be known. 
Upper 70s in the Black Hills in February - how incongruously wonderful."To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
~ Emily Dickinson
~ Emily Dickinson
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