July 19 Day 19

Yeah!!!! Another 100 degree day!!!!

We decided to get on the road a little earlier than usual today, hoping to get a couple of hours of riding in before the temperature started rising. At 8:00 AM it was pretty comfortable, with the temperature around 75. But, by 10:00 AM it was back in the 90's.

The morning ride started out pretty nice until I had a bee fly inside my helmet! I tried to knock him out by shoving my hand into my helmet. That reaction got me stung twice on the hand, then he actually flew into my mouth. I spit him out quickly, but he was still stuck in my helmet. Somehow, he got around into the neck collar in my helmet and stung me twice more on the back of the neck. Enough I said, well actually I'm not sure what I said. I did find a place to pull over and remove the helmet, and finally got the little bugger out... he is now squished in the parking lot!

Onward, with 2 new welts on my hand, and 2 on my neck...

Lennie and I were in this area 2 years ago, and you can see details from that trip by clicking here.

We passed the Crazy Horse Memorial, and it looks just like it did 2 years ago. I am not convinced they will ever finish this undertaking.

We then took a trip across Needles Highway. The pass is littered with rock spires.

Some of the spires are right in the middle of the roadway.

Needles also has a number of one lane wide tunnels. Here are a couple of the tunnels, pretty neat.

This tunnel is actually on Iron Mountain road near Rushmore. If you approach from the south, the tunnel actually frames Rushmore in the background.

After traversing Needles, we decided to drive around the wildlife loop in Custer State Park. Guess what we encountered? You got it, more road bison. These are a very special breed which tends to graze on the asphalt rather than the typical grass grazing bison (honest).

Like in Yellowstone, these fellows have no issue mingling with the cars and bikers.

Still unnerving being this close to a wild animal this large! As in Yellowstone, we make it through safely.

A couple of miles down the road, we came across the "begging burros". These guys stand in the road and block traffic, because they know that people will feed them. They will stick their head into your car window for food. They will also eat right out of your hands.

These guys are very tame, and there is much less worry getting close and personal with them vs. the bison.

We stopped, and this one walked right up to me so I could pet him. Once he realized I had no food, he continued down the middle of the road.

After leaving Custer State Park, we headed up Iron Mountain road toward Rushmore. Iron Mountain has 3 pigtail bridges. These are bridges that wrap around and pass over themselves. They are used in places where a large elevation change is needed in the roadway, but there is not much land available. Fun to buzz around on the bike.

Now the obligatory Mount Rushmore photos.

The full face shot.

And the less popular profile shot.

After Rushmore, we made a run north into Deadwood.

Deadwood was an old mining town that sprung up when gold was discovered in the area. The town was actually illegally set up on Indian land, and was pretty much lawless for many years.

Now, it's pretty much a tourist trap, with shops, casinos, and gunfight re-enactments in the street. Still a fun place.

In Deadwood, there was a saloon known as Saloon #10 where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker. If you ever heard the term "Dead man's hand", it came from this incident. Bill was holding a two pair hand, Aces and Eights (all black cards), when he was murdered. No one is really clear on what the kicker card was, but the HBO Deadwood series used the 9 of diamonds.

After Deadwood, we headed over to Sturgis. The well known Sturgis bike rally is coming up in a few weeks. This will be the 71st rally, and starts on August 8th. The town of Sturgis has a population of about 6500, but during bike week, they have about 750,000 bikers in town!!! Hotels within a 200 miles radius are sold out, and the open areas of land become tent cities filled with camping bikers.

There was a TV show recently that went inside one of the popular Sturgis bars and showed how the bar is run during rally week, including the financial side of things, somewhat interesting. The bar in the show is the Full Throttle Saloon, and is the largest biker bar in the world.

Michael Ballard, owner of the Full Throttle Saloon, purchased the 30-acre property in 1999 and turned it into the world's largest biker bar. Ballard has made a career out of running a bar that is only open 10 days out of the year, during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. That's right, only open 10 days out of the year. During those 10 days, they are visited by more than 300,000 visitors.

The Full Throttle is an indoor/outdoor bar and includes several large stages, a burn-out pit, a tattoo parlor, zip lines, a wrestling ring, restaurants, dozens of stores, hundreds of cabins for rent and parking for thousands of motorcycles. They also host a number of concerts during rally week, including bands like Molly Hatchet, Ted Nugent, Marshall Tucker Band, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Bret Michaels.

There was some activity at the bar when we stopped. It looked like they are getting set up for the rally, there was a full size tractor trailer dropping off huge amounts of beer.

Here is a photo of the side of the property as you approach from the east.

Here are the "cabins" you can rent! They are 14x24 sheds, with two double beds, air conditioning, a small table, microwave, and small fridge. Not quite what I have in mind when I think of vacation lodging :)

They must make a good buck during those 10 days, as they have a custom tractor trailer setup emblazoned with their info.

The rest of the little town is already prepping too. Seems like every business, and even the front yards of some private homes, become t-shirt and rally junk stores.

After our visit to Sturgis and the Full Throttle, we headed back to Rapid City for the night. A little dinner, and another day has passed.

Tomorrow we start the ride homeward. We will probably drive through the Badlands National Park, as we head east to Sioux Falls SD for the night.

Our stats for today indicate that we covered 217 miles, bringing our trip total to 5304 miles. Below is a map of our route from today.