DAY THREE - or "Live animals and dead Presidents"

Sunday, 19 October 2008.

So today was going to be the day to do a little sight-seeing and then hit the highway toward Idaho. After talking to the couple sitting beside me at the bar last night, I made some changes to my route. I would go back down Spearfish Canyon during the morning, check out Deadwood on my way through, then cruise through Sturgis before heading down to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monument. Then I would head out of town and stop at Devil's Tower on my way through Wyoming. I didn't have retrace any routes that way and it would allow me to see the most in as little time as possible.

The drive through Spearfish Canyon was even more amazing during the day. There were cliffs and bluffs and outcropping and waterfalls. The smell of the decaying Aspen and Birch leaves was refreshing and almost sweet in the cold morning air. It was difficult to concentrate on the challenging drive with so much beauty around me at every turn. I had overslept (stupid hotel alarm clocks) so I only stopped once to take a picture that does very little justice to Bridal Veil Falls. Just imagine another twenty miles of scenery just as beautiful as that and you will have some idea of the drive I took this morning.

I made a souvenir stop in Deadwood. It's a very cool little town. The main street with the oldest building is occupied almost exclusively by casinos, bars, and gift shops. There is a Harley store that sells licensed merchandise. One of the casinos was also raffling a customized Ultra Classic Electra Glide. The town was nice and quiet on an early fall Sunday morning.

I continued on to Sturgis which turned out to be a bit of a let-down. All I saw there were bars (which were closed), gift shops (which were also closed), and empty store fronts that apparently only did business during the motorcycle rally. I didn't have any maps of the city to show me where the "cool" part of town was, and I didn't have enough time to go exploring for it. I'm just going to have to come back during the rally, I guess. I'll bet I find the cool parts of town THEN!

Finally, I got on the highway to Mount Rushmore. It was on highway 16 near the monument where I had my first close encounter with wildlife for the day. Several wild turkeys were hanging out on the side of the highway poking around for lunch. I turned around and parked near them to take a picture. Like the rest of the animals in this state, they really didn't much notice me. I took a couple of good pictures of them and drove on. I only wound up spending about an hour touring the monument but got to see great views and even took the path that goes right to the base of the mountain. I took the time to stop and read a lot of the historic descriptions and I took a LOT of pictures. But since this is one of those seriously over-photographed national monuments, I won't flood this post with them. Still, I like this one a lot and you'll just have to put up with it. I was surprised that there didn't seem to be much of a museum on the premises. I did take the time to look through the gift shop and get my kids a couple of pressed pennies, then I hit the road again in order to get to the Crazy Horse monument. It was already after lunch at this point and I still wanted to get out of the state before dark.

Thanks to the helpful suggestion of the stranger at the Badlands National Park, I decided to ride to Crazy Horse via Iron Mountain Road out of Rushmore and then north on Needles Highway. As it turns out, both roads were slow going due to the great twists, curves, and spirals. The spirals on Iron Mountain Road were done with bridges called "pig-tail bridges." There were no good pull-off points to get a good picture of one, but take my word for it that there is an old wooden bridge under the spiral in that picture. As I first entered Custer State Park from Iron Mountain Road, I had my second wildlife encounter of the day. I have no idea where he came from nor why, but there was a donkey in the road. I stopped far enough back to get a picture without scaring him away. I really needn't have worried about it, though. A car approached from the opposite direction but he just watched it pass. After I took this picture, I rode on past the donkey. He just stared at me as I went by as well. My next encounter came just a couple of miles later. I have no idea where the mountain goats came from, either, but at least the terrain seemed a lot more appropriate for them to be there. And just like the donkey and the wild turkeys, they didn't seem to really care that a couple of cars and a motorcycle stopped to take pictures and drive slowly past. In fact, one of the mountain goats walked out into the road when a car approached. He definitely seemed to be expecting some lunch. We all just drove past, though. I soon found out where Needles Highway got its name. Although both roads had tunnels and rock formations, there is a rock formation called the eye of the needle that is a large narrow opening in a tower. Directly behind it is a tunnel that felt for all the world like driving through an eye of a needle as well. While I didn't get a picture of the rock formation, here is a good one of the tunnel. It is only covered for the first half (as you approach the camera) - the last half is open to the sky up a very narrow crevice. It was a gorgeous drive.

Even though the scenic route probably added twenty minutes to my drive, it was absolutely worth it. The problem was that just as I arrived at Crazy Horse, thick clouds began coming over the next range over and obscuring the sun. That really bugged me because the Crazy Horse monument has a great complex of several buildings dedicated to recording the building of the monument as well as native American history and modern native American crafts and artwork. There is even a pair of custom motorcycles representing the monument, one of which was being raffled off. If I thought I could spare the $20 I would have tried to win the new white Street Glide, too. As it was, I made due with more pictures. I spent well over an hour exploring the complex and taking pictures. As I was leaving, I decided to get a picture of myself and the bike with the monument behind. (A modern military leader and his ride with a representation of an historical military leader and his steed behind? Probably not, but it's nice to pretend.) The employee who took the picture for me was also a Harley rider. He told me that for a $125 donation, I could be escorted to the top of the monument. Or I could wait for the first full week of June to join thousands of others for a donation of a few canned goods. I may have to make the larger donation just to get a "private" tour. This is a beautiful monument that I hope is completed in the coming years while I'm still able to ride.

Finally, with clouds closing in it was time to get out of the state. After all, I needed to be almost 900 miles away in a little over 24 hours. I still wanted to get to Devil's Tower. Since it was only a couple of dozen miles off my path, I decided to risk getting caught by the imminent weather and go for it. "There's no bad riding weather, just poor clothing choices," right? I had my last close wildlife encounter of the day just after I left I-90 on my way to the tower. While I had seen quite a few road-killed deer and a couple of live ones in South Dakota, as soon as I crossed into Wyoming I started to feel like I was in one gigantic deer preserve. The picture shows just the first of more than half a dozen HERDS of deer that I saw close by the road as I finished my trip for the day. Highway 14 winds a lazy way to Devil's Tower and is a nice relaxing drive. I stopped once more when I got my first glimpse of the Tower, and one last stop at the souvenir store at the base. This store was the first place I had found that carried walking stick badges similar to the ones that the kids and I collected in Germany, so of course I bought three sets. I took a little time to warm up in the shop as the overcast skies helped drop the temperatures that were in the high 60s earlier quickly down to the low 40s. Then I hit the road one last time for a blast until dark, finally stopping at a Days Inn in Gillette, Wyoming for the night. Total miles ridden for the day - 318. Total covered so far - almost 1550.

DAY TWO - Part Two

When we last left our intrepid hero... oh, wait. That was some other guy. Sorry.

At the end of my last post, I was in the middle of South Dakota, heading toward Sturgis. My goal at that point was to drive through Badlands National Park then head for the Black Hills. On Brian Klock's suggestion, I decided to drive through Spearfish Canyon and stay the night in the town of Spearfish before checking out more local attractions the next day.

I got a bit of a surprise driving through the middle part of the state. Indiana's unofficial motto is "there's more than corn in Indiana," to which someone usually adds, "yeah - endless freakin' soybean fields." Some of the really adventurous farmers in Indiana will put out a field of wheat on occasion. Party animals, that bunch. I had to actually pull over and take a picture when I saw a field of SUNFLOWERS in the middle of South Dakota. I definitely wasn't expecting that.

Since I decided at the beginning of this journey to stop at whatever grabs my attention (within reason and time constraints), I pulled off at a roadside "attraction" called the Badlands Petrified Forest (I think). It was a little museum/gift shop with an enclosed back yard full of large specimens of local petrified wood. The place was well-organized and it was fun just walking around looking at the unique pieces. I especially liked the logs that had been flattened by intense pressure before being petrified, making them look for all the world like a gigantic loaf of petrified french bread. Several pieces were so perfectly petrified in natural colors that I had to touch them to be sure they were actually made of stone. There was even a ten or twelve foot high log. It was a massive stone that must have weighed several tons. I picked out a piece of petrified wood for my son and a piece of rose quartz for my daughter from their rock-hound yard and went inside to check out their museum and store. There was more petrified wood, as well as many large dinosaur bones and other fossils. As I was taking pictures, some movement on the floor caught my eye. A juvenile bull snake had come inside the building and the cold concrete floor was making him lethargic. I picked him up and he seemed to appreciate the warmth of my hand. I asked the owner if it was a shop pet before releasing him back outside. Overall, this was a really great little stop for such a small little roadside stand. I'm definitely glad I stopped.

Next it was finally time to head through the Badlands National Park. For a small fee, you can drive a 35 mile loop that comes out about 20 miles further down the interstate. Very convenient. The drive itself is a lot of fun for motorcyclists due to the hills and curves. The park also has several turnouts and overlooks with information boards telling about the sights. All told I spent well over an hour driving from stop to stop and taking pictures. At the first stop a family asked me to take a picture for them, and I asked them to take a couple of pictures for me. The husband asked where I was going and then made suggestions for nice sight-seeing and driving and gave me a good map of the area. As I continued on the road, it dropped down into and wound its way through the crags and canyons and then would come back up and follow along the rim. At one point, I even came across a wild prairie dog "town." Apparently these little dudes aren't afraid of much of anything. One seemed to like having his picture taken, even. It was really a beautiful drive and I could have spent a lot more time walking the trails and seeing the sights that were further off the road. Visiting this park could easily be an all-day trek, especially if you stop to shop in the very nice visitor center and gift shop. As it was, I had over a hundred miles to ride still and it was getting well into the afternoon. So I headed out.

Although I didn't have much interest in Wall Drug, stopping there seemed like a sort of rite of passage for folks traveling through South Dakota. As it turns out, the town of Wall is at the western terminus of the Badlands National Park loop, so I didn't have much excuse, really. I took a quick look through the place, but didn't see much that interested me. Mostly it was just a lot of shops. There was a penny press machine though, and since my kids like to collect the stamped pennies I decided to get a couple. I walked across the street to the little bar to use their ATM. Since I needed change, I stopped to get a Coke. There were several locals there drinking, and I started chatting with them. They looked for all the world like they were right out of a wild west painting. It turns out that one of them was a rodeo legend from back in the 60s and 70s. Apparently the guy had been read last rites three different times from bad bull rides, including being gored in the head twice. He's the guy with the falling hat in the picture. I stayed in the bar chatting for almost half an hour. These were very cool people and it was worth the time getting to know them before heading for Spearfish. I'm glad I needed to find that ATM.

Finally, I drove toward the Black Hills. It took almost another hundred miles to get to Sturgis, then I had to get to Spearfish Canyon. The route from Sturgis took me through the towns of Lead and Deadwood. The sun was going down so I didn't have time to stop in these towns, but I planned to visit them the next morning. Along the twisty two-lane I saw several mule deer right on the edge of the road - got a bit of a chill imagining what would happen if one started out in front of me. There was still a good deal of snow in the shady areas from the 8" the region received the previous weekend. As the sun went down, the temperature quickly dropped into the low forties and as I went up in elevation it got down to the high 30s. By this time, I didn't care. This was the most beautiful stretch of road I had ever seen. I spent the last 20 minutes of the drive twisting back and forth on switchbacks and hairpin turns. There were very few straightaways. Even in the failing light I could tell that this was a beautiful area. I was definitely going to drive back through here the next morning to see what I was missing tonight.

At the far end of the canyon, I stopped at a busy little restaurant called the Spearfish Chophouse. Man, those guys know how to kill and cook a cow. I had a ribeye and fries to celebrate my great day. I knew it was a good place to eat when I saw the cow skull on the wall above the entrance. (For those who don't know, I've had a similar skull mounted to the front of my Jeep for over four years now.) The meal was great and I immediately headed to a hotel to crash for the rest of the night.

As I lay in bed writing notes for this blog and remembering all the cool stuff I had seen and done and the great people I had met, I realized that THIS is why I took this trip. What a great day. Total miles ridden today - 470. Miles this trip - 1230.