Fall is a wonderful season. The leaves are changing colors, the weather is cool and there’s plenty of fresh produce. Even better? There are festivals to celebrate this wonderful time of year! On Saturday, September 24, there are two festivals in the Black Hills. The Great Downtown Pumpkin Festival takes place in Rapid City, and [...]

This upcoming weekend, September 16th and 17th, is the 21st annual Deadwood Jam, and it’s going to be an awesome mix of funk, blues and rhythm. Known as the Black Hills’ premier fall music festival, it’s the perfect excuse to head up to Deadwood, SD, for the weekend to kick back and take in some [...]

One of my favorite weekends of the year is almost here – Labor Day. It’s the perfect excuse to get outside and enjoy some of the last days of summer. And I can’t think of a better place to do just that than the Black Hills. Here’s a list of a couple of ways I [...]

When people think of the old west, they think of cowboys. And when they think of cowboys, one of the images that comes to mind is a cowboy out on the range under a starry sky, singing cowboy songs to lull his cattle herd to sleep. But that’s not just a thing of the past. [...]

Remember how in my last blog, It’s Sturgis Rally Time!, I confessed that I had not yet experienced the rally? Well, yesterday I got a taste of it during the Legends Ride! The Legends Ride is a motorcycle ride from Deadwood to Sturgis that pairs Rally-goers with celebrities and top-bike builders, along with a reception [...]

It’s that time of year again. Sturgis Rally time, that is. Each August tons of motorcycles come to the Hills, and if you’re a car driver like me, you feel like a minority for much of the month. Cars virtually disappear and motorcycles rule the road. I’ve only lived here two years, and last year [...]

When people think of the Black Hills, there are several things that come to mind. One of those things is gold. The Black Hills was the last major gold rush in the United States, and these hills used to be chuck-full of mines. So you’d think that there would still be a lot of those [...]

The streets of Deadwood are about to be filled with boots and spurs and cowboy hats. The parking lots will be filled with big diesel trucks pulling trailers stuffed full of horses, their bright eyes peering out from between the slats and maybe a tail or two hanging over a rear trailer door. This week [...]

In my blog post last week, I told you about aspen. In this post, I’ll tell you about birch – the other white-barked tree that grows throughout the Black Hills. Because aspen and birch both have white bark, from a distance they look pretty similar. But up close they are very different. One of the [...]