Babs Young has made Rapid City an irresistible destination. She writes:
This is Miller’s Antiques in Rapid City. Worth a stop any time you are visiting the area. It goes on and on, and if you are looking for something, he probably has it. It may take awhile to find it, though.
I’m putting some more images of Miller’s on Flickr. They are being uploaded as I write this. You can see them in the Miller’s Antiques set.
Up until now I have known of three fine features of Rapid City:
- It is the home of Bard Jim Ribby, who is a friend and performance poet and probation officer–not my probation officer, you understand, just generally a probation officer for miscreants in Grand Traverse County. Not that I have a probation officer in any case. If I did, I would like it to be Jim, because people who know a great deal more about this than I do say that he’s very good at his job. I digress even more than usual.
- It is where the 314-acre Seven Bridges natural area has been preserved. This is a wonderful spot that, when I went looking for a link for you, I discovered has no proper web presence of its very own. We must remedy that.
- It is beloved of one Marilyn Doty Larson, who wrote to me back in 2008 when I started Torch Lake Views. TLV was, she opined, a worthy blog, but it lacked reference to Rapid City, the Gateway to Torch Lake. I wrote back that I was having all I could do to get my thoughts organized around Torch Lake Township but that if I ever expanded my geographical reach, I would like her to show me around Rapid City.
Clearly it is time for me to get in touch with Marilyn again.
Every week photographer Babs Young captures moments in northern Michigan, and every week she sends one to Torch Lake Views just for you. You can find more of her photos at the Babs Young Photo Archives and on her Blue Heaven Flickr photostream.
Torch Lake Views 
uphilldowndale
May 17, 2010
Is the only difference between a junk shop and antique shop the price?
Gerry
May 17, 2010
Ah. The only difference between a junk shop and an Up North sort of antiques shop is the organization and general fluffing up. Then there are the shops selling Arts and Crafts period furniture and Pewabic Pottery and so forth. Organized, fluffed, and definitely expensive. Junk shops . . . well, we generally call them resale shops or flea markets and they are places for adventures.
La Mirada Bob
May 17, 2010
Thank you for linking us to Blue Heaven.
It reminded me of the box of antique barb wire pieces moved from California Dreamin’s garage in 1993; now buried somewhere in our combined garage.
Gerry
May 17, 2010
There are whole barbwire museums. I think Preston and Anna Surface might have done a piece about them. Barbwire is intimately entwined with the history of the West.
uphilldowndale
May 18, 2010
I’ve posted upon the ‘devils rope’!
Bouquet of barbed wire
Resale and fleamarkets sound to have the thrill of the chase about them, not to mention economy
Gerry
May 18, 2010
I knew I’d seen a fine post on it somewhere. I can see it now, LaMirada Bob and Bonnie his Beloved will open a Museum of Barbed Wire out on the highway. I will have to go out there and do a blog post about it at the very least.
Fee
May 18, 2010
I love shops like that.
When I was small, we used to visit what I now know is called a “reclamation yard”. It was full of random collections of stuff. Just bits and bobs, odds and sods. Dad loved it because you could find old woodworking tools at a snip, and he swore that they were guaranteed to outlast their modern equivalents. Mum just loved a good rummage in the trunks full of old fabrics. We got many a Hallowe’en costume out of those trunks (and some curtains once, which took years to banish from my mind. Big flowers they had, and my over-active imagination saw nasty looking faces in those flowers).
Gerry
May 18, 2010
I love the way one photo can evoke a stream of memories! You’ve given me some good ideas, Fee. And your dad was right, in my opinion. Well-tended old tools are good partners for the hand, and move surely through the work.
Cindy Lou
May 18, 2010
Love your probation ramble! It’s kind of scary how quickly I trip down the ramble road with you!
And Mr. Miller’s looks like a bit of heaven to me…I could get lost in there all day….think of all the treasures that are lying in wait?!?
Gerry
May 18, 2010
Oh well. If ramble we must at least let it be down interesting trails in good company!
P.j. grath
May 18, 2010
Loved my old visits to Miller’s. Haven’t been there in years. And how about Skegemog? Isn’t one of the ways in close to Rapid City, or am I geographically challenged?
Gerry
May 18, 2010
You are geographically talented! There is a Skegemog Pathway trailhead in the vicinity of Rapid City.