Friday September 26th, 2025 - Fall trip to oregon - Days 13 and 14, Black Hills to Prairie Du Chien WI, 1 hike - 6.8 miles and 600 feet elevation gain

Wednesday was a long driving day.  We started out heading South on US-385 through Hot Springs SD and then East on US-18.  It was a very desolate stretch of plains for several hours.  Later, following the suggestions of our friend Bob (who was born in South Dakota) we were on SD-44 East of Winner and saw some gorgeous ravines and very dramatic bluffs of the Missouri River.

We overnighted at Fort Randall Casino which was not a winner nor a very nice place to stay.  The hotel wasn’t awful but it was VERY basic and old but it was cheap.  The next day we spent most of driving East through Ohio on US-20. US-20 makes a very direct and generally high speed journey across many miles of Iowa.  We made a brief tour to visit an Iowa institution, Maid-Rite, in Waterloo.  It wasn’t Brian’s favorite lunch but the strawberry shake we agreed was excellent. 


We visited a state park in Iowa, Backbone State Park. I had previously stopped at this large state park, Iowa’s first, on my winter trip through Iowa a few years ago.  I only walked a few short miles in the deep snow but the solitude and beauty made me want to revisit it when I could be here with Brian.  This trip we went to a totally different part of the park and, despite being a little groggy, we pounded out 6.8 miles of trail along the East and West Shored of Backbone Lake.  The two sides of the lake had very different trails.  One side was narrow and rocky with a lot of stone steps, the other was more of a small road/snowmobile trail with a gravel surface.  Surprisingly, the wider snowmobile side had more ups and downs and was longer in distance but it was very beautiful and more thickly forested than the other ‘trailier’ side.









From Backbone State Park (Iowa) to our hotel in Prairie Du Chien Wisconsin was only an hour and a half.  The hotel I picked out was done kind of on a lark.  Normally we stay at any of the 3 chains we collect points at (Best Western, Hilton or Hyatt) and we could have done that in Prairie Du Chien but sometimes I go wild and pick out a local place.  The ‘River District’ Hotel turned out to be entirely beyond our expectations.  While not a luxury property per se, this was one of the most well thought out, enjoyable properties we’ve stayed at in a long time.  I’d also forgotten that our room had a jetted tub which was AMAZING after the long day of walking and our late afternoon hike.  The breakfast, both area and food, was gorgeous.  I had some cheesy potatoes, sausage and made to order eggs.  Brian had a muffin that was so good it almost made him forgot about the lame breakfast he had in Hill City. :). There were extra towels near the tub in our room, 2 HVAC units for our oversized room and everything was clean and had a colorful design.  The mirror mounted over the bed was… umm… something we could have done without.  We are seriously looking forward to having more time to spend in Prairie Du Chien again.

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