Good Times Never Seemed so Good.

The second day of vacation, Thursday, was my 50th birthday. I woke up early, because I was so excited. John asked me if I wanted some tea and to open gifts.That was exactly what I wanted. He is the best at giving me perfect gifts. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that we have the same passions and it's fun for him to buy me the stuff I want. He already gave me my big gift - those new bike shoes, but he still got me a Red Shamrock jersey (I'm wearing it in the photos), a rain jacket for the bike, and wireless headphones to wear while I'm running. So wonderful. His mom bought me 3 new books and some bee lotion. I can't wait to get my hands on all of it.

Before my vacation, I was most excited about riding the Mickelson Trail. It is 109 miles of crushed gravel rails to trails in the Black Hills. At one point, I thought we'd try to ride the whole thing, but we kept finding other cool things to do. So, since we were only going to ride part of them, we searched for the best part of it. We heard that from Hill City to Mystic Road was the best part of the trail. So we headed to the trail head in the town of Custer and rode to the town of Rocheford and back.
 
We rode road bikes, and had to let a little pressure out of tires to help with speed and comfort. The trail is basically a gradual ascent on the way out and a gradual descent on the way back.

We rode past incredible scenery and even rode very close to the Crazy Horse monument. In the picture above you can see John getting photo bombed by Crazy Horse.

When we got to Hill City, we decided to stop and fuel-up. It was my birthday after all. We had a beer and an appetizer and then headed back to the trail.

 We got to the coolest part of the trail shortly after Hill City. So many cool tunnels to ride through and and bridges to ride our bikes over. It made me so very happy.

We made it to the halfway point and it turned out to be basically a saloon and a gas station. We had a late lunch there. They had no veggie or seafood options, so we both ordered reubens and hand-cut fries. They must of cooked and cut the corned beef in-house, because it was definitely the best reuben I've ever had.

Since there was a descent and we weren't taking so many photos, we went back so much faster than we went out. We did stop again in Hill City and had a beer on the rooftop deck at the Bumpin' Buffalo.

Once we got back to the cabin, I started a fire and made black beans and quesadillas with guacamole, salsa and lettuce. We ate and drank a night cap and sat by the fire talking, until it died-out. Perfect birthday achieved.