The public gardens in Rapid City are at their height in late summer and early fall. The William Noordermeer Formal Gardens in Sioux Park are particularly impressive and draw many pedestrians and bicyclists. Taking family photos at the gardens is a tradition for many residents. Photos by Kristina Roth George.
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| Nathan Schock and Mystic Mountain Run founder Jim Brown at the post-race picnic. |
The year that I was born, 1974, construction was completed on my grandparents’ vacation home in Mystic Valley, which is nestled in the heart of the Black Hills, about 20 miles west of Rapid City. My grandparents have since passed away and the home has been passed on to my father and his siblings. Still, family vacations have taken me there at least once a year, first as a child and now as a father.
Three years before that home was built, Jim Brown started a road race just a mile up the valley. So in 1971, 21 runners competed in the first Mystic Mountain Run, which makes it the longest running race in western South Dakota. Brown placed sixth.
I first heard of the race as a young boy vacationing in the Black Hills. Our vacations always included a lot of hiking — at least one long one per day. If soccer season in my hometown of Sioux Falls was approaching, we added”soccer climbs” which were comprised of climbing 220 feet over a quarter of a mile as fast as we could. Still, I had never run the race. Until this year.
About a year and a half ago, I was part of a national trend of people getting back into running. A three-sport athlete in high school and a varsity college soccer player, I finally came to terms with the fact that my body could no longer handle the physical beating that came with those sports. But I needed a way to stay in shape and an outlet for my competitive drive. Running was the one thing left I could do, so I started with a 5k. Halfway through 2012, I have already competed in a 5k and two 10ks. Now, I’m training to run in the Sioux Falls Half Marathon.
But it just happened that this year’s family vacation to the Black Hills ended on the same day as the Mystic Mountain Run. I had finally run out of excuses. It was time to run.
So on July 8, I joined 125 other runners for the 42nd annual installment of the race. Pre-race course directions came from the founder, Jim Brown.”It’s all right turns,” he said of the race course, which is a giant loop. I was half paying attention while I loosened up for the race and finished my Gatorade, but he caught my attention with,”You cross the creek twice. If you cross it more than twice, you’re lost.”
The race itself is as brutal as it is beautiful. It’s officially listed as an 8 mile course, but Runners’ Shop of Rapid City owner Dennis Lunsford said it’s closer to 7.5 miles.”We’ve never done a formal measurement,” said Lunsford, who has been helping with the race since he first ran it in 1979.”We never felt we needed to. Mystic is just Mystic.”
Runners are lulled into complacency by starting with a two mile run on Mystic Road that slopes gently down to the valley. But any sense of comfort is quickly shattered when you cross the Mickelson Trail and start climbing the mountain. And keep climbing. And climbing. In fact, the entire third mile of the race is uphill, as runners (“walkers” would be a more accurate description for me at this point) climb more than 750 feet. My treadmill doesn’t have a setting that duplicates that incline.
As I hurtled down that final descent, my quadriceps were about ready to mutiny and find some other, more sane body to inhabit.
The one benefit of slowing down for the climb was the spectacular view of Mystic Valley off to my left. Castle Creek was visible, winding between the Mickelson Trail and the service road that dead-ends at my family’s vacation home. The one drawback (besides the obvious) is that I was one of a handful of runners who got stung by a bee. As if the climb wasn’t difficult enough.
What awaits you at the top of that climb is an old logging road which guides your descent to a valley that is home to Slate Creek. After fording the creek twice (and only twice), we had one more mountain to climb. At the peak of that second mountain, runners have now climbed more than 1,000 feet and are rewarded with a bone-crunching 1.5 mile plunge to the finish line. As I hurtled down that final descent, my quadriceps were about ready to mutiny and find some other, more sane body to inhabit.
I ended up placing 11th out of the 126 runners that finished the race, which was good enough for third place in my age division of 30-39 year old males. My time of 58:48 was just a little more than ten minutes off the winning pace set by 22-year-old South Dakota State University runner Mike Krsnak, who has now won all three of the Mystic Mountain Runs in which he has participated.
A picnic for the runners and their families was held for runners and their families once the last person finished just over two hours after the 9 a.m. start. I had a chance to chat with the race’s founder, Jim Brown, who said he has only missed one of the 42 races.
Brown handed the majority of the responsibilities to Lunsford and the Runner’s Shop. Lunsford got involved purely out of the enjoyment of the race.”I just loved the atmosphere of it,” Lunsford said.”I love its rustic atmosphere. I helped for so long, that Jim thought I would be the person to turn it over to.”
Among the runners, there was also a family atmosphere. As we walked up to the starting line, the organizers asked for a show of hands on how many people had run it before. More than half the hands went up and many stayed up as they asked who had run in more than two races…five…ten. Even at 20 races, a few hands stayed in the air. During the picnic, it was obvious that this was a community of runners and this was their annual get-together.
As for me? I’m already looking at the second Sunday in July for my next family vacation to the Black Hills. It’s the most unique race I’ve ever run and unquestionably the hardest. Next year, I want to be one of those runners with a hand in the air, saying I’ve done this before.
If you want to join, check out The Runner’s Shop’s site for next year’s date.
About the author: Nathan Schock is a fourth-generation South Dakotan who resides in Sioux Falls with his wife Barb and their three daughters. Nathan is currently employed by Locals Love Us and in the past has worked in politics, higher education and renewable energy.
Semi-regular South Dakota Magazine photo contributor Jeremiah M. Murphy took photos of skateboarders at the first of this summer’s three Black Hills Skateboard Comp Series events at the Rapid City Skate Park. The next competition in the series will be July 14. Technical information on the stunts in these shots was provided by Nick Wittman and the crew at Gnar Spot in Rapid City. View more of Murphy’s photos at Tumblr.
Art Alley was started in downtown Rapid City, between Main Street and Saint Joseph from 6th to 7th Street, in 2005. Todd Rigione and other Black Hills artists were painting the walls inside the Presidential Building when they ran out of space. Rigione suggested they continue outside. The art has evolved and changed greatly through the years since. Rebecca Johnson took these photos the first weekend in June.
Bear Country USA offers intimate views of black bear, elk, reindeer, deer, cougars, bobcats, rocky mountain goats, bighorn sheep, dall sheep and buffalo. Jan Nickelson shared these photos taken last summer in Rapid City.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The little cowboy town of Scenic, South Dakota, located on the western edge of the Badlands, received local and national attention this week when Twila Merrill, who owns much of the town, put it up for sale. The buildings may belong to someone else, but the true legacy of Scenic lies with its unique and colorful characters. Several years back, our publisher Bernie Hunhoff wrote this story about Scenic and its residents. You can find this story and more like it in our book, South Dakota’s Best Stories.
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| Scenic certainly can boast that it has South Dakota’s most unique main street. |
By Bernie Hunhoff
“Every town has its characters, but in Scenic the characters had a town,” wrote Philip Hall in the book Reflections of the Badlands. Traders, trappers, homesteaders, drunken monkeys, saloon-keepers, missionaries, rodeo champions, bikers, gamblers and other interesting sorts have called Scenic home.
The town site below Sheep Mountain has long been a”last stop” for travelers arriving in the Black Hills. Scenic’s very first businessman, according to Hall, was bad-luck rancher Ab Jefferson. When a May blizzard pushed all of Ab’s cattle over the edge of Sheep Mountain, he decided to open a saloon. Ab drank too much of his own merchandise, and sold some of the rest to his Indian neighbors. Selling alcohol to Indians was then a federal crime, so Jefferson ended up in jail.
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| Brands from local ranches decorate the ceiling of the Longhorn Bar, where almost nothing has changed for many years. Saw dust is thick on the floor and patrons rest on oil barrels affixed with metal tractor seats. |
All the flat land on the outskirts of the Badlands was claimed by the time Mary Hynes and her eleven children arrived. She was told that the only land not homesteaded was an inaccessible spot atop Sheep Mountain, so Mary and her boys clawed their way up the mountain, and were delighted with the view and the rich, flat grasslands. She brought her 20 cows up, staked a claim, built a sod house and made a life for herself.
Mary Avenell of Yankton, the granddaughter of Hynes, said growing up in Scenic in the 1950s meant living shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most colorful people in North America. Mary’s dad,”Happy” Hynes, ran a bar that competed with the Longhorn. Once, her dad bought”black market” meat and he felt guilty about it — maybe because he learned that officials from Rapid City were planning to investigate.”Hap,” a non-Catholic, went to the parish priest to confess and ease his conscience. Meanwhile, her mother cooked and served all the evidence before the sheriff arrived.
Scenic is a company town these days, owned lock, stock and longhorn by a single corporation and run by a petite, pony-tailed woman who came to this windswept place against her will in 1963. Twila Merrill was riding rodeo stock, not barrels and poles that are usually the domain of the womenfolk, but the real thing: bucking broncs. She was mending from injuries in Omaha when her father, a longtime Pine Ridge Reservation trader and rancher, telephoned to say there was an emergency. Twila drove all night to get back to Pine Ridge, fearing someone had been hurt in an accident.”When I got home, Dad told me Bud (my brother) was going to show me a bar and a house in Scenic that I was supposed to buy,” recalled Twila.
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| Twila Merrill rode wild broncs before she “settled down” in Scenic. |
Knowing her dad’s determined ways, she reluctantly agreed to take a ride.”There wasn’t even a road all the way between Pine Ridge and Scenic then. We drove through Cottonwood Creek and mud was flying everywhere,” she said.”The bar was a one-room affair with a nickelodeon. I didn’t even look at the house. Tumbleweeds were blowing down the street and Scenic was the last place in the world that I wanted to live.” She and Bud returned to their dad’s Pine Ridge ranch, where a big argument ensued. She lost the argument but gained a town. Her family’s corporation now owns all but one home in town. They also don’t own the Congregational church, the school or the fire department. But they do own the land where the rented post office is located. And they own the Catholic Church, built in 1913 and now abandoned. Twila is considering a renovation project that would include”Michelangelo-style murals” in the interior. But the town’s landmark — to some its very soul — is the Longhorn Saloon, little-changed since the 1960s when Twila’s father persuaded her to come to Scenic. The front is lined with rows of skulls from longhorn cattle. Brands from area ranches are painted on the ceiling. Sawdust covers the floor. Oil barrels with metal tractor seats serve as sturdy bar stools. Twila has tried not to change the aura of the place. However, she did have the sign changed. It once read”No Indians Allowed.”
She painted over the word”No.”
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| Prairie Berry Winery relocated from Mobridge to Hill City in 2004. Larger tanks let Sandi Vojta experiment with wines and begin the fusion label, which blends two fermentations into another style of wine. |
Sandi Vojta became a fifth-generation winemaker at the age of four when she experimented with yeast and fermentation. Her dad would take her out to pick chokecherries for wine, tying a piece of twine with a pail attached around her waist so she could pick berries with both hands.”But my favorite part was, and still is, getting the fermentations started; getting the first smell of the fruit’s potential.”
“It has been a way of life. It’s just who I am,” she says. Neither she nor her father has copied a recipe for the family wines.”Instead, we used a taste of the wine that he grew up with. When he made his wine he was trying to replicate that taste, so that is what I tried to do with my wine,” she says.
The winery won a double gold medal at the 2011 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition for its Brianna wine in the white hybrid category. The Brianna grapes are grown at Lewis and Clark Vineyard in Yankton. Their wines have been winning awards at prestigious wine shows for years.”It’s awesome because people are paying attention to the state of South Dakota, and it’s great for our entire state’s wine industry,” Sandi says.
Prairie Berry currently makes about 30 varieties of wine — including the popular, funky Red Ass Rhubarb. The Hill City winemakers are branching out into new tastes, including a fermentation made from West River prickly pear to be released this fall. Vojta has a flavor vision of what she wants to accomplish with each new wine.”Sometimes I feel like I nail it the first time around. For others, I feel like I’m just getting closer to the vision with each release. I’m always trying to make things better. I’m never content.”
Sandi Vojta’s parents taught her how to make wine and how to cook.”We grew up eating a lot of chili, and mom often followed it with steamed apple dumplings,” she says. This dumpling recipe is her mom’s, and the chili is”pretty close to what she used to make.” Vojta chose these recipes as perfect pairings for her Buffaloberry Fusion, Gold Digger and Crab Apple wines.
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| Pair Vojta’s chili with Prairie Berry’s Buffaloberry Fusion wine. |
Serves 2 – 4
Paired with Prairie Berry’s Buffaloberry Fusion wine
1/4 yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup no-salt added crushed tomatoes (not drained)
4 tablespoons canned chopped green salsa
1 cup water
1 cup canned Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed
Juice from 1/2 lime
SautÈ onion, garlic, Italian seasoning, and cumin in oil over medium heat for 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, green salsa, water and beans, and bring to boil. (If desired, add 2 ounces cooked ground turkey or diced chicken breast.) Simmer 10 minutes, and serve with lime juice on top.
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| Try Prairie Berry’s Gold Digger or Crab Apple wine with these apple dumplings. |
Serves 6 – 8
Paired with Prairie Berry’s Gold Digger or Crab Apple wine
2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
3/4 cup milk
1 quart boiling sweetened apple sauce
Bring the applesauce to a boil in a non-stick Dutch oven. Sift together the dry ingredients, rub in the shortening with fingertips keeping the mixture coarse. Moisten with the milk, mix, turn onto a floured board and pat to one-half inch thickness. Shape with a biscuit cutter and place in the boiling apple sauce.
Cover tightly and boil 20 minutes. Additional sugar and cinnamon may be added to the boiling applesauce if desired.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story is revised from the May/June 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
Even if you didn’t grow up on a ranch, Slim McNaught’s cowboy poetry is bound to make you crack a smile. We wrote about his CD Reminiscin‘ in our current issue. One of the tracks is called “Tom Cat Wreck.” It’s the story of how McNaught once got bucked off his horse when a cat jumped from the haymow and dug its claws into the mare. That’s bad enough, but McNaught landed face first in a fresh cow pie.
Here’s a short excerpt explaining what happened when the ruckus caused other colts in the barn to bolt:
So I flopped back down, tryin’ to squirm into the ground,
’cause them colts was now trompin’ my frame
And to add insult to hurt, they pushed my face in the dirt,
right back in them cowpie remains.
Now, the skin has grew back and the breaks are intact
and the years have brought out the humor
But ’til that cat was gone, we did not get along
and if you hear I like cats, it’s a rumor.
McNaught lives on a ranch near New Underwood, where he operates a custom leather business. Here’s a link to his website.
