Just When You Thought I Was Done…I Take You To Coon Hollow

There’s one thing about staying home for Memorial Day weekend, as well as your husband having an extra day off…you find you have more time on your hands than you thought.

This weekend seemed to stretch out for a long time, in a good way of course. Monday we found ourselves done with breakfast and trying to figure out how to spend our day. Given that it was still only in the 60’s the pool was not an option, so we opted for another hike.

Our intention was to hike the Coon Hollow Trail in hopes of picking our a camping spot for next weekend. Husband has a few requirements for a camping spot: secluded, requires a hike into the woods, near a stream. Seeing as we never did find a stream and were met by multiple other hikers, Coon Hollow as out. 

But it did still make for an interesting afternoon.

You see, we got lost.

Husband spotted a trail down an embankment, so of course we had to check it out.

And ended up back on the Flume Trail.

Which ultimately landed us here…

How ironic right?

If you read the fine print above it says that the vista was created by volunteers from Ellsworth back in 1984.

And supposedly you can see a water tower that’s on base (and 20 miles away) from this point of view.

You can’t see it in the picture but we could see a water tower. However, when driving home that afternoon we determined it to be the one in Rapid City, not on base.

Needing a few minutes of rest we brought out lunch.

Husband had planned to surprise me with hot chocolate for dessert.

But our stove was broken 🙁

While Husband worked away trying to repair a broken hose, I photographed the dogs for the 2,093,345 time.

Still working on the stove…

Even with Jean’s help there was no success. So we had chocolate milk instead.

Jimmy kisses!

Jimmy drunkenly smiling for the camera.

Jimmy on alert.  

Jimmy giving up.

This is when the fun began. We came back down the mountain as we had come, crossed a dirt road, and hopped back on the trail that had led us to the vista. We found the bank we had scaled down, but I protested climbing back up the near vertical path. According the maps we had it looked as if the trail we were on would feed back into the Coon Hollow Trail so we followed it.

Over an hour later, with a climb to the top of a hill to try to figure out where in the world we were, we finally found a service road we had crossed earlier. 

Except we didn’t know which way to turn on it.

Luckily Husband ignored my terrible sense of direction and headed in the opposite way I had advised (let’s hope I never get lost alone!).

And found our trail.

Except we made another wrong turn and found ourselves back at the beginning of the big loop we had just hiked.

So we walked through the woods, on no trail at all, and happened upon the one we had been searching for.

My poor, tired, weakling, little legs were so happy to get home.

And enjoy our bison steak dinner (which you’ve already seen).

And with that, our first Memorial Day weekend in South Dakota came to an end.