Sylvan Lake, Black Hills 21 August 2014

This will be a little backwards ... but not really, as I will explain. We have arrived at Sylvan Lake, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. An attentive reader will note the absence of some Major Destinations from this narrative.

In the last two days, we traveled from Eastern Idaho all the way across Wyoming. With few exceptions, this transect is without much interest, as can be inferred from the slices of imagery below -- assuming that the internet here is up to the task of receiving these words and images. I will have some comments about the quality of the American Internet as compared to that of relatively primitive countries, say, Sicily and Croatia ... when I have a better connection. Maybe saying that is enough?

About halfway across Wyoming, there's a very interesting lump, the Bighorn Range. Nothing spectacular enough for a National Park, but in the context of most of Wyoming, a welcome relief. Today was a travel day. (The less said about yesterday, the better. But I will come back around to that. For now, given the state of the local internet, let it be said that we are traveling easily, there are good salads to be had, and for the next day and two nights we will be roosting comfortably high atop the Black Hills.

Before dinner, we scooted down a steep slope and then wandered around this spectacularly sited man-made lake. It is one of the focal points of every visitor's Black Hills experience, and has been for a hundred years or more.

The lake was created to be in front of the Lodge, which (sadly) burned down. At left you see the quite natural dam of monolithic granite boulders; the narrow thread of light between two of them is the lake's spillway. There's a one-mile trail, beaten by millions of feet over the century, around the lake.

It must be noted that the folks around here are friendly, and mostly from Wisconsin!

Superb salads well served rewarded us back up the hill in the (relocated) lodge, where the accommodations, except for the internet, were comfortable.