SIOUX FALLS S.D. (KELO) — So far, local tree experts are saying this year is not looking good for the vibrant fall colors we’re used to due to our wet spring.
In this week’s Flashback Friday, Kevin Jensen takes us back to 1983, where we take in the spectacular sights and sounds of Spearfish Canyon during the fall season.
The natives say you haven’t experienced a true South Dakota autumn until you’ve taken in the breathtaking fall colors in Spearfish Canyon. And you won’t find 81 year old Lloyd Elman of Sioux Falls arguing with that. He’s been to the canyon at least eight times, but this years first fall visit tops them all.
“We’ve been here most of the time when its everything was green this time is in the fall and we got all the colors which just makes it that much better.”
The beauty of the canyon in the fall is best expressed in the words of 19th century poet Robert Service: “Though peoples perish in defeat and races suffer to survive the sunshine never was so sweet so vast the joy to be alive the laughing leaves the glowing grass proclaim how good it is to be the pines are lyric as I pass the hills Hosanna sing to me I am one with all I see with wind and wave with pine and palm there very elements in me are fused to make me what I am through me their common life stream flows.”
The Latchstring Inn near the upper reaches of the canyon has been there since the turn of the century, the resorts owner has taken in the change of seasons in the last 18 years, she says autumn is when the canyon best expresses its personality.
“It changed all at once, they were really slow changing and then we had a real hard freeze and they changed just kind of overnight. It seems really different every year, something changes, leaves change different and the colors are prettier depends on the year whether its dry or we have a wet year.”
