Sturgis and Devil's Tower

August 11, 2005

Data coverage is terrible and time is short - so my missives will also be terrible and short.

We arrived in Sturgis on Wednesday morning about 6:00 a.m. Dallas time. Smitty and I had pulled the late shift on driving, Smitty went to sleep and I stayed up for a bit with Sonny and Jaybo watching the sun rise, drinking a bloody mary and smoking a cigar.

I crashed for a bit and then we had breakfast, met the nieghbors and got settled in before heading out. The picture to the left is of two of our right-side neighbors who were actually from Billerica, Massachusetts. Nice guys. That's an 8-cylinder Boss Hog motorcycle. No kidding, it's a big-block Chevy on two wheels.

After breakfast, we decided to get on the road and struck out north for a bit and then turned west, heading for Devil's Tower in Wyoming. The Tower is a good hundred miles or so from Sturgis. I have never seen so many bikes - about 9 out of 10 vehicles on the road are motorcycles and they snake along the roads in groups of hundreds at a time. Hulett, Wyoming was just packed with people - thousands and thousands of bikes. We were slowed to an absolute crawl at times. We later learned that it was "No Panties Wednesday" in Hulett. Had we known that, we might have stopped for a bit.

We rolled on through to Devil's Tower, which was also packed. The tower was impressive - physically and as an artifact of history - a monument to a volcano long wasted away by time, leaving only magma that was inside - like a Tootsie Roll Pop for geology. We took some pictures, had a beer and moved along.

We ended up in Spearfish for a late lunch and then went down through Spearfish Canyon. The canyon was amazing and we expect to get back through there at some point to take some pictures of the falls by the side of the road (called Bridal Veil Falls) and some of the other sights. There were long, winding roads with canyon walls on either side of us. We cruised through at about 40 miles an hour to take in the scenery as we rode through the canyon. We rolled through Lead and into Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickock was killed, as dusk was falling over the town. We rode up Main Street on our bikes and then stopped to take in the sights a bit. Motorcycles lined the streets with nary a parking space to be found. We stayed for a while and then struck out for home where we cooked some burgers and attempted to watch Blazing Saddles. Old men that we are, we all fell asleep during the movie. Sorry, no tales of wild parties and loose women. Maybe tomorrow.