| Gillette, WY to Alliance, NE
8/5/2004 |
I awoke at dawn and faced the East. The bike was pointed towards the Mecca of Motorcycling, Sturgis, SD. I took the long way there, leaving I-90 at Spearfish and taking the Spearfish Canyon Byway.
Sturgis has been kind of a "been there, didn't do that, got the t-shirt" thing for me since we started planning this trip. I'm not much on bike rallies and this one is the mother of all rallies. It's also largely oriented towards Harley-Davidson so that kind of leaves me out. I did get the obligatory t-shirt.
I rode through town to see how things were progressing for the Bike Week Rally which officially starts on Monday. Lots of vendor tents being erected. T-shirt vendors everywhere. Already the town seems full - I had to drive around to find a parking place. Yet I suspect that maybe only 20% of the estimated 500,000 people are in the area already. I have no idea how anyone will drive/park/hear come next week.
The roads are full of bikers. At every intersection, more are waiting to join the throngs going on rides through the Black Hills. I ended up behind various group rides all day. While it was kind of fun seeing all the people and bikes, I still have no desire to actually be there next week. I'm sure that Clif will post lots of pictures since they plan to hit town at the height of things.
I passed through Deadwood on the way to Sturgis. The whole downtown is on the National Register so I decided to spend more time there on the way back from Sturgis. Walked around and decided that it would be nice to come back when I have more time. Deadwood was the site of the big gold rush that precipitated the battles that Custer fought. The Black Hills had been given to the Indian nations by treaty but all was forgotten when gold was discovered. Deadwood still has working mines.
Their most famous citizen seems to have been Wild Bill Hickok. He was killed there during a poker game in 1876. He is buried on Boot Hill along with Calamity Jane and other notorious persons. I'll take the whloe tour the next time.
Gambling is everywhere. You can't get to a restaurant or other business without wading through a front room full of slot machines. Even the ice cream place that I went to for a cup of coffee had slot machines in the lobby.
I stopped in Keystone for lunch. I think I've now had my last buffalo burger but you never know. Bikers were everywhere here as they were in every other Black Hills town and attraction. I left Keystone and drove up the road to Mt.Rushmore. They had a separate entry lane just for bikes! It's sort of a strange deal - the monument itself (National Park Service) is free. But you have to pay $8 to park and the Parks Pass doesn't cover that. The monument was very crowded but I was able to see the movie on the history and building of this great sculpture.
I left Mt. Rushmore and headed for the Crazy Horse Memorial. This is a hugely ambitious project, both in trying to create the largest sculpture in the world as well as develop a vast educational and cultural project devoted to Native Americans. Crazy Horse's face alone is taller than the figures on Mt. Rushmore. The family of the original sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, is not taking any government funding for the project. He died in 1982 after almost working alone for many years on the project. After 50 years, you can see how much of the total has been accomplished. His great-grandchildren may be the ones finishing his work.
Entering Nebraska marked my 49th state visited in my life. I think that Iowa is the only place that I haven't been. I picked up quite a few new states on this trip. Just before crossing the border a huge rainstorm blew up. The rain was pelting me so hard that I thought it must be hail. The crosswind was so strong that it took all my strength to keep the bike in its lane. At one point, I pulled into a rest area for about 15 minutes. Naturally, the storm started up again as soon as I left.
The rain lasted about two hours, all the way to Alliance, though not as bad as that initial burst. All things considered, I was relatively dry. The entire West is so dry that I can't begrudge them some moisture. This was the first serious precipitation in over four weeks of travel.
