Eastern Meade and Pennington County Roads

[cwc]

I'm planning a ride to the Black Hills starting Thursday or Friday.

I'll leave Eastern MN on Thursday or Friday and try to stay on unpaved roads as much as possible.  I'll be camping along the way and in the Nemo area.

The bike of choice is the venerable 1995 DR350.  My travelling companions will have F650GSs.

We'll leave Pierre and follow the Bad River before heading straight west.  We plan to angle NW to Pedro where Jud tells me there is a low water crossing of the Cheyenne River.

Question 1 Is the Cheyenne river low enough to permit crossing now?

If the crossing isn't possible (for us) we'll backtrack to the Four Corners bridge.

My maps show a county road going to Howes, but Google Earth shows some roads going more or less along the river to the crossing at Pedro.

Question 2 Are those roads open to the public without incurring gunfire?

It looks like after the Pedro crossing there are county roads that will eventually lead us to Piedmont.

[loingrader]

your route sounds fun, but i don't have any answers for you.  just wanted to give you an fyi.

i'm sure you know it is rally week at sturgis so there will be a LOT of bikes around and camping sites can be hard to find unless you are just camping on natl forest ground outside of a campground.

look out for all the doped up guys on the road.

[cwc]

i'm sure you know it is rally week at sturgis so there will be a LOT of bikes around and camping sites can be hard to find unless you are just camping on natl forest ground outside of a campground.

I've been there  a bunch on street bikes.

I'll probably just ask someone in a forest campground to share their site.  People are surprisingly agreeable to that.

I'll only be going into Sturgis on Monday and Tue for the GNC flat track races.

My young friend Jake Mataya (Nat. Number 29) and maybe his brother Nick will be racing.

We'll probably head home Wednesday.

[loingrader]

how did the ride/route out to the hills work?  any luck on finding a good route?

[cwc]

how did the ride/route out to the hills work?  any luck on finding a good route?

I'll start out with "We had a good time".  But it was not all that we had hoped for.

Three of us started out Friday morning, Dave on an F650 Dakar, Bill on an F650GS (his wife's bike) and me on the venerable DR350.

Most of the roads looked like this.



But a few looked like this.



As we got into SD the roads looked the same except there were less trees and it was less green.

Just before we got into SD Dave's bike started leaking oil from the water pump, so he elected to head for home.

Bill and I headed for Wessington Springs on mostly fast gravel.  We got there sooner than expected so had an early supper and took SD34 to Fort thompson where we found free camping at a Corps campsite.  I think we probably missed some fair riding north of Wessington Springs, but it would have been mostly straight roads.

The route looked like this.



Saturday we took 1806 up to Ft. Pierre where we discovered a screw in Bill's front tire.  Some nice guys in a tire shop just north of the Cowboy gas station let us use their shade, bead breaker, air and a barrel to put in a new tube.  Bill had them patch the old tube to keep as a spare.

Before noon we were on the Bad River Road.  It's not uninteresting, but hardly challenging.  We had info that the Cheyenne River had too much water to allow crossing at Pedro, so we headed for Ash Creek Road and the Four Corners bridge.  The roads in that area at least had curves to go with the hills.  That road led us to Howes where we got refreshments and amazed the assembled herd of HD riders with our tales of dirt roads.

At Plainview we went south to try to find a way to follow the river.  We got a look at the river crossing by Pedro, it was a nice area.  As we went along we inquired about routes at the few ranches in the area.  In each case the message was the same.  The roads along the river were on private land and we were not welcome there.  Eventually it got late and one rancher was kind enough to let us pitch our tents on his land.  Not in any scenic spot, but where they could keep an eye on us.



Sunday we pretty much gave up and headed for Nemo via Enning, Elm Springs and Piedmont.  Again, not uninteresting, but hardly challenging.  In Piedmont we did some shopping for supplies, had lunch, got gas and gave the Piemont Fire Road a try.  Unfortunately Bill had promised not to damage his wife's F650 and he decided that he might not be able to keep that promise on that road so we went south and took the paved road to Nemo.  Later on he did go up to the overlook at Nemo and got that done with no damage.

Here is the Sat/Sun route.




We spent Mon-Wed going to races, going to eat, hanging with the REAL dirt riders at our campground and generally taking it easy.  Bill left Wednesday and I left Thursday morning.  I took SD 34 all the way across the state, stopping in Wessington Springs for the night.  It rained on me all day.

I probably wouldn't do this route again, but it was a good experience to do it once.  Way better than staying home.

Lest I leave the impression that Bill isn't up to riding on bad roads I should mention that we have traveled on some pretty marginal roads in Mexico when he was on his DRZ400.  For examples see here  http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=317343

Maybe this is more than you wanted to know.

[loingrader]

Maybe this is more than you wanted to know.

nope, it's exactly what i was wanted to know.  i don't know much about that part of the state.  thanks for the report!