Spearfish, Sd Hotel On Top Of Hill
spearfish, sd hotel on top of hill
Hail, Hail, The Gang's All...Landed Safely in Spearfish SD
Strange Vignettes...
As a group, we do tend to confuse people. In response to a query about Ruth by the FBO counter staffer in Sheridan, Dick declared, "My wife? No, that's not my wife. Her husband left her in Portland..."
Bob Hawkins awoke badly in need of chiropractic help. His back had been putting him in a lot of pain, and how do you find a good nearby chiropractor on no notice in a strange town?
Judy mulled this matter while she headed out on an early run to buy postcards at Wal-Mart. It was remarkable how often our accommodations were near a Wal-Mart...and how often we really needed things and could get them conveniently! Time after time, this King of the Big Box stores came to our rescue. Departing with her postcards, Judy had a flash of inspiration. Who knows where the good chiropractors are? People who need chiroporactors, of course. Judy asked the senior citizens working the breakfast shift as Wal-Mart greeters. They knew right away! "Oh, yes, just right out the door and down the block, past the blue truck, right there!"
Not only was the place nearby and could take Bob immediately, but the chiropractor was also a pilot! After extensive fancy diagnostics, he did a very effective treatment that helped a lot. That, in combination with the new cushions that Bill and Dick had gotten from WalMart, put Bob into good shape for departure.
The weather forecast started with an AIRMET that IFR conditions -- ceilings and visibility too low to fly safely visually -- wouldn't lift until noon anyway, so there was only mild grumbling from those who thought that the conditions really had been good enough to depart earlier. After Bob came back from the chiropactor, we huddled over charts and plotted a course from Sheridan past Devil's Tower and on toward Mount Rushmore (just west of Rapid City SD), two of the visual highlights of the eastbound trip, and then to a little place called Wall South Dakota (6V4, for those who are looking at Sectional Charts), where of course Ruth had either been before or had a cousin, we've started to lose track. This woman has cousins in EVERY city in America!
All three planes took off in quick succession about 12:30 local and
had a beautiful flight above terrain that was a fusion of high plains, rolling foothills, and badland-shaped buttes. About 20 minutes after we departed and checked in with flight service to open our flight plans, we were offered a weather warning of a rapidly developing violent thunderstorm ten miles across, moving east northeast toward us from two miles southwest of Rapid City in South Dakota, close to our planned destination of Wall.A quick conference on the air-to-air frequency among the pilots resulted in a new destination along the route, after Devil's Tower but stopping short of Rapid City: Spearfish South Dakota, Black Hills airport. The place had some accommodation, fuel, a small town, and best of all, reported 0300, "...Ruth's cousin Becky lives there!!!" Dear heavens!
That decision made, we proceeded around 7000 feet -- about 2000 feet above the top of the Tower, and circled just outside the prescibed three-mile no-fly ring. In 624, Judy had been piloting that leg of the flight, but Bill took the controls for ten or twelve minutes while we circled counterclockwise so she could take pictures. Bill said later that to him it was just a big pile of rocks.
Judy LIKES rocks, and this was just splendid. A close encounter of an aerial kind...Dick and Ruth in the Cardinal did their circuit about five minutes behind us, with Bob and Janice bringing up the rear...or so we thought, until a radio call revealed that they'd decided to just do a linear fly-past and arrived at the Black Hills airport ahead of everyone, despite being the slowest plane and usually the last to arrive! Mostly neither of them were all that excited about getting close up to the big rock tower.
That was awfully lucky. As it turned out, not ten minutes after we had all landed safely, and had just fuelled, it started to rain. Did we want to hangar the planes? $90? No problem....as it had just started to HAIL, it was money well-spent. We had had a great couple hours' flying and were greatly relieved to be down safely. While we had cut short our planned trip today to stay out of Rapid City's weather, our decision had kept us clear -- just -- of a quite nasty cell that we didn't see, Flight Service didn't tell us about, and may not even have
showed up on 624's stormscope. Bob and Janice's decision to fly past rather than go around Devil's Tower kept them out of the hail, not just won them the early arrival prize.Pea-sized to marble-sized white ice rocks pelted the pavement and we were very glad for the swift services of the young FBO gentleman who hauled our planed inside in the nick of time. For his troubles and care he was recognized with the Order of the Dragon, a ball cap he sported with pride.
A call to flight service confirmed our instincts that we were not getting any further that day...but that we have a very good weather window ahead of us on Friday. By about 3 pm we were shuffling baggage and getting set to settle in.
Once again, an FBO special rate at a nearby Holiday Inn with shuttle service took us in for the night. Sundry laundry, relaxing, weather checking and cousin-calling were the orders of the day. Judy decided she needed a walk, and, watching the sky, set out for an intriguing-looking building on the hills opposite the hotel above the interstate. Turned out to be a prairie heritage museum rising
above a new subdivision being carved into the hills of Spearfish."Don't cut across the fields to the building," cautioned the local resident who told her about the museum. There's some longhorn cattle and some buffalo pasturing there. You don't want them charging you!" Judy got most of the way to the building, and realized that I wanted to commune with the buffalo...before she noticed the giant storm cell from the Rapid City system moving in and hustled to outrace it on foot to get to yet ANOTHER Wal-Mart for supplies for Bob (and more postcards) before the rain hit.
By then, Bob was resting, Ruth had rounded up Cousin Becky and introduced her to Janice and Dick and Bill, who regaled her with highlights of the trip so far. We re-grouped, Ruth went out with Becky, and the rest of us checked out the recommendation that the FBO and Becky had both made for the Chop House for dinner. Our shuttle driver, a moonlighting local cop who missed having the time and money to fly now that kid number two was on the way, was delighted and envious to hear about our trip. He, like people in
just about every other place the group had landed so far, said how unusual this weather was!!Dinner was perfectly adequate, the blonde native Californian waitress in her third day on the job was entertainingly clueless and provided a splendid conversational diversion as she attempted to get our orders right. While she had only moderate success in so doing, she held up her side of the banter sufficiently well...and she WAS cute in a Ventura Beach kind of way.
Another good day of sights and flying -- about another 200 miles, but as we heard and watched more stormy weather blow through that evening, there were NO complaints.
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