Black Hills Off Road Adventure
The next day of our trip was a whole day of ripping through the Black Hills in a Polaris RZR, a brand new purpose built monster we put to the test, sometimes unintentionally.
We started the morning bright and early at 7:30, when we arrived at Adventure Rentals in Custer. This rental outfit was very impressive, with almost too many employees, a rare sight in 2024. The three college girls out front sign you in and outfit everyone who rents from them with a kit consisting of a spray bottle and towel to wipe off the windshield, an emergency beacon since there is almost no cell reception out there, and a Samsung tablet with GPS loaded with all Black Hills trails complete with points of interest. After signing in and getting the kit, we were then familiarized with the tablet by another very nice lady. We caught on quick and were off to find our vehicle and be fitted for helmets.
The numerous guys that were there to take care of everything after the registration process had already guessed our sizes, correctly, and set us over to who we assume was the manager of the whole place. He took us over to brand new RZR, only 30 miles on it, which were delivery miles, and showed us the basics. Since we have driven side by sides before, we were easy customers and he told us to break her in… we did.
Since Adventure Rentals is right in the middle of town in Custer, the first couple miles of anyone’s off road journey is on public, paved roads. Side by sides, four wheelers and dirt bikes are legal in South Dakota on any road except interstate highways, as long as the vehicle is registered. So we took off right through the middle of town and up the state highway three and a half miles to where the trail system starts. It was around 8am, so there was traffic. But, these vehicles are more than capable of driving in traffic at 50 mph, so no big deal.
Our first destination was a POI on the tablet, an old abandoned silica mine. The trails to it were fairly easy, since a lot of trails were not just for recreational vehicles, but all highway vehicles, although I wouldn’t' recommend driving something without four wheel drive doing it. There were a few challenges on the way, but we would get into more interesting terrain later. We had already switched once before getting there, so since I started off driving out of town, Kacie pulled up to the mine.
The mine had three or four openings carved into the side of a mountain, all interconnected as you get further in. There was evidence of a few cave-ins, and at least one opening that was probably 12-15 feet high, that had been blocked off by one solid rock wall. I have no idea how they pulled this off. There was a ton of graffiti, no surprise there, mostly only visible with a flashlight. It doesn’t take long once you’ve in the cave until you’re in total darkness.. The caves aren’t that deep, but still, almost no light gets in. We probaly only spent a half hour or so at the mine, and then I jumped back in the driver side.
After the mine, we looked for more difficult trails to experience… and we did. Our next destination was a lake in the middle of nowhere to have lunch. We found quite a few trails that put the RZR to the test. This model was 62” wide, which is the limit for a lot of the hardcore trails, mostly meant for four wheelers and dirt bikes. Some trails really were only that wide, but we navigated them fairly easily. A lot of rocks out here, and since there had been rain for the past couple days, a lot of mud holes too. The mud was fun to hit, but always made the windshield a challenge to see through.
On the way to the lake, we somehow took a wrong turn and made it onto a powerline trail that we probably shouldn’t have tried, but we thought it would get us there. It was mostly loose rocks, and pretty steep. Shortly after starting this trail, I actually needed to put it into four wheel low gear to continue on. We got to the highest point beside a powerline, and then saw that we would have to descend. We did, slowly and carefully, bouncing down over the rocks. After a bit of white knuckled, hard on the brakes fun, we came up to what we found out was the end, a five foot drop with no trail we could find after it. I wasn’t going to drop that thing off of that drop anyway, so the only choice was to go back up where we had just come from. Neither of us were overly confident about climbing what we had just come down, but there wasn’t much choice. Lucky, the current generation RZR is more than capable of climbing. I had to do the whole ascent in low gear again, but we crawled the whole way up with almost no variation in speed. The thing just walked up all the rock faces, twists and turns, without even thinking about it. I was though, if I messed this up, we were activating the beacon. A more experienced driver probably wouldn’t have even worried in a machine like we were driving, but this one was something like you see in Youtube videos and say “damn”.
After getting out of that one, we found another route to the lake which was pretty uneventful.
The lake was beautiful, and stretched pretty far from where we stopped to eat our PB&J’s. It was a nice little park/picnic area with tables and a bathroom. We did see a couple people in a boat, strangely enough towing two kayaks, but no other life in sight. It was nice and peaceful and relaxing. But, by then it was already around 1 and we had to be back by 4. We were pretty far from Custer at this point, so we needed to start moving in that direction directly.
After lunch at the lake, we found a pretty direct route, we thought, back. We mostly stayed on dirt roads south, hitting a few more interesting trails where we could, not getting too off track from our route south to Custer. We did run into a few trails that were closed to motor vehicles, but did manage to get a few in that were fairly challenging. However, for the most part, we did the hard stuff in the first half of the day.
Right before getting back on the highway we found a spot where you can see Crazy Horse. It was pretty far away but the phone cameras can really zoom. I wanted to go to the monument (Kacie) but now I feel like we’ve seen it without having to pay the entrance fee.
With about an hour to spare, we hooked back up to the highway to Custer, and pulled into town around 3:30. The RZR was absolutely caked in mud, and so were we. The guys at Adventure Rentals are used to this, I’m sure. They checked us back in, and immediately took the vehicle over to power washer to get it clean for the next day. Kacie went back into the shop to buy a shirt or two while I stayed outside to smoke.
We had planned on staying in town after to eat dinner, but needed to shower first. Luckily, our rental house was about 10 minutes out of town, so we could run, home, shower, and then head back for dinner.
We ended up at what was advertised as the oldest saloon in South Dakota. Maybe it was, we didn’t care much about it’s history after the crazy day we had. I had a burger and Kacie had a salad… go figure. And we both probably had too many drinks. We escaped that place right before they started Bingo. No matter what state we end up in, every bar feels the need to do bingo, or karaoke, or some other sad thing. We got out of there and headed home. It was a good day.
