EddieWalker
Epic Contributor
I totally forgot about this thread. The Black Hills are one of my very favorite places to visit and also very high on my list of places to move to if I ever sell this place. The cold has been my biggest reason to not move there. I'm just not sure if I'll be able to deal with it for such a long period of time.Dragged this up looking for my South Dakota people. I did most of my growing up there.
Happy belated, Eddie. Glad you enjoyed my home state. We made the trip similar to yours about 14 months ago. My daughter hadn't been there since she was about 2.
My cousins have a 150+ year old ranch outside of Sturgis. Home to 1000 head of cattle and a bunch of pronghorns.
City folk would view them as ignorant hicks, but they all have BS degrees and generational wisdom of ranching. From the outside, the ranch looks like many others, A throwback to another time...in reality, it is a scientific marvel with millions of dollars worth of land, cattle and equipment.
Trying to create my own farm here in East Texas, I've learned that everyone who has already done it is just about as smart as a person can be. Just thinking of what it takes to build a working barn while taking care of the land and paying all your other bills is almost overwhelming!!! Fencing is taking me years, and I still have years of work ahead of me.
I got divorced a couple years after this trip. It was a lot of fun, but I would never go there when Sturgis is happening again. The noise from all the bikes was horrific. The last time I went was in September of 2013 and that's just about the best time to be there. I really need to go back again, I miss hearing the elk bugle and seeing the aspens.