Welcome back to Lectric City Guides! A series of blog articles showing you how to explore different areas of the U.S. by eBike. We're lucky to have a vast network of passionate riders out there who share their stories with us!
Up until this point, we've followed along with energetic RVers, Christian and Nate, through their Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas adventures with their family. Now, we're taking a look into Midwest adventures with Tony and Peggy of StressLess Camping!
First up: The land of Great Faces, Great Places, and great eBiking adventures! That is South Dakota. Keep reading to hear from Tony & Peggy themselves and learn all about their epic Midwest adventure!
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Wanting to hit that mile goal on your Lectric eBikes odometer? One of the places you might consider adventuring to is the beautiful region of the Black Hills in South Dakota!
This stop has been one of the friendliest eBike areas we've traveled to thus far (and believe me, we've done A LOT of traveling) with great camping and some terrific places to enjoy all sorts of activities, food, and drinks!
Mickelson Trail
The highlight of our eBiking experience in the Black Hills has to be the Mickelson Trail. This unique route was a former railroad and has since been converted into a bike trail.
A crushed-rock surface makes eBiking with our XP 2.0 eBikes a breeze as it is well-maintained and smooth. The trail has all kinds of hills, bridges, trestles, tunnels, and much more! The scenery was beautiful and diverse, which made for an overall entertaining and great ride. You can catch the trail from nearby campgrounds and ride it all the way into town for an afternoon pick-me-up, if you so choose!
The trail was not too difficult for us either. A few hills and bridges were easily navigated by pedaling with PAS 1 engaged on our eBikes. There were a couple of places where we bumped it up to PAS 2, but the rolling hills made use of the seven-gear ranges on our rides.
Camping and RVing
There's an abundance of places to camp in the Black Hills! Including a number of really unique and unusual spots, some smaller RV campgrounds, and even a few places to camp free of charge.
Many of these campgrounds are right along Mickelson Trail which, made it easy for us to unload our eBikes and head right into exploring the greater area around Mickelson Trail.
It’s challenging to describe just how beautiful the scenery is as you ride through it. Magnificent trees, pathways blasted through rocks by the railroad, farms, incredible countryside, cows, horses and other riders make this such a wonderful journey.
There is also plenty of rest stops along the way where you could bring a picnic to enjoy, or simply sit back and look at the magnificent countryside! Speaking from experience, this is the kind of experience that RVers live for.
Alpine Inn
On our second day, we found that we could take the trail all the way up to Hill City, where an authentic German restaurant resides. This was our second trip to the Alpine Inn, which offers terrific German fare.
My personal favorite is the German Platte, or plate, which has two kinds of authentic German sausages, red cabbage, sauerkraut and cheese spaetzle (pronounced schpetz-lee).
While this is certainly a heavy meal, good thing we had our Lectric eBikes to help get exercise on the way back to Custer State Park without a problem!
More Adventures
The Black Hills offer so many different adventures, and we had no idea just what was in store for us. We were fortunate to have had a great tour guide, Lesa M., who is an official South Dakota Girl Camper guide. Lesa took us through Custer State Park where we saw buffalo, prairie dogs, and even fed donkeys. There is so much wildlife to see in this incredible place!
We also visited Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We took on these locations by car, but that doesn’t diminish just how this area is easily accessible by eBikes thanks to the Mickelson Trail!
The first time we visited the Black Hills, we didn’t have our Lectric eBikes. I feel like we missed quite a bit after experiencing the wide-open beauty on two wheels! So much of this area is accessible by eBike, so be sure to bring yours along if you decide to take on the adventure yourself this summer!