August 2 – Arrival in Sturgis!
As I mentioned in my last post, I had a couple of places I thought might be interesting to visit while I made my way to Sturgis. Unfortunately, neither one panned out. The first place was the Dakotaland Museum in Huron, where I had spent the night. According to MapQuest mobile, it wasn’t too far from the motel with the huge pheasant, so off I went.
And found … vacant land. No building, no parking lot, no nothing. It looked like there had never been anything there, either, and not like something had been there once and then torn down. Nope. Nothing.
So I got back on the highway and headed west to Pierre (pronounced “peer”). When I got there, I found a nice riverside park where I could have lunch and rest a bit:
Right across the street was the Visitors’ Bureau, but naturally, it being Sunday, they were closed. I found copies of their promotional magazine in a box by the door, sat down, and took a look through it to see what I might find interesting. On Sunday, in Pierre, SD, not much. A sign gave some historical information about the Lewis & Clark Expedition and what they did near there, but that was about it. So that, too, was a washout.
Since the Lewis & Clark Expedition pressed on, I decided I would, too. I left Pierre, crossed the Missouri River, and immediately entered the Mountain Time Zone, although it took about a half hour for my phone to figure that out – I guess it was still picking up signals from a repeater in the Central Time Zone.
I was still about 175 miles from Sturgis, so I was surprised to see how many motorcycles were heading east on SD 34. And it only got worse, the closer I got to Sturgis. And they were loaded with gear, so I don’t think they were on day rides. [I found out later that lots of folks come for “pre-Sturgis” and then leave at the beginning of the actual Rally Week.] I found some interesting things along the way, too (well, interesting to me):
Abandoned bridge on the old road alignment
Lots and lots of nothing – with an occasional river crossing thrown in
First glimpse of the Black Hills and – unknown to me at the time – Bear Butte (the little hump on the right), near where I stayed for a week
At one point I was motoring along at about 65 mph when I caught a glimpse of some motorcycles off to my left. I took a better look, and realized that I was sailing right by the fuel stop I was looking for! It was a good thing all those other bikes were there, or I would have been in deep doo-doo. [I was looking for a small cluster of buildings, or a town, or something – anything larger than a single 2-pump gas station in the middle of nowhere!] So I hauled down from 65, made a U-turn (I’m getting good at U-turns on this trip), and went back to get my first-ever tank of 94-octane. It was all they had!
When I got sort-of close to Sturgis, I saw a sign saying SD 79 turned off to the right up ahead. I figured it might be about time to pull up MapQuest again and find out just *where* I was going; it turned out that (a) I was a lot closer to Sturgis than I had thought, and (b) the Iron Horse Campground was *on* 79! So I followed MQ for only about 5 miles and found my home-away-from-home for the week.
Home Sweet Campground Cabin!
I got a lower bunk! YAY!
No one else was there; they were all at the Broken Spoke Saloon, which was another 7 miles up Route 79. I had to get the campground management to let me into the cabin. After I unloaded my stuff and took care of nature, I rode on up to the Broken Spoke to find Jen, Paula, and Tony. The place was packed (it’s also a campground, and very popular during the Rally), so it took a while for me to locate them. I discovered that I could have ridden the Honda through the saloon and found them right away, but I figured I should park in the first spot I saw, and that happened to be before the ride-through-the-saloon area. So I did it the hard way.
The bar had a lot of … interesting … people there, both as customers and as staff. I’ll just leave it at that, but here’s a photo of one of their decorations:
Right in front of the stage
The featured act for the night was ZZ Top. I like them but can’t stand the sound volume at a concert, so I had to leave relatively early – at least to go outside, where the noise was somewhat attenuated.
ZZ Top on stage
I wandered around the parking lot for a while and took lots of pictures of lots of motorcycles. There was *everything* there, from bone-stock machines to super-customized bikes with awesome paint jobs to oddball trikes to … stuff. I saw so much unique machinery last week that I can’t put it all in a blog – I’ll have to post them somewhere and give y’all a link to it. But here are a couple of samples:
This gives new meaning to the term “boat trailer”
How often do you see a Harley pulling a car? The car’s top lifts up to provide lots of storage space. Jen and Paula are schmoozing with the owner.
Why would anyone do this to a nice antique truck?
So I arrive at Sturgis and am totally overwhelmed on the first day! Where can it go from here?
[Interesting tidbit: Bikers almost always acknowledge each other with a casual two-finger salute. You can’t do that at Sturgis, or else you’d be riding single-handedly all the time. It’s that crowded. I finally gave up the salute somewhere between Pierre and Sturgis, and didn’t start doing it again until today, when I was more than 100 miles away from there.]
The Peripatetic Traveler 
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