When life gives you lemons, go ride Lemonade!

Touring Sturgis Area 2

We continue the next day with a ride out to the Badlands.  This is an area of bentonite clay that erodes badly every time it rains.  If you look close you can see a person in the center of the photo.  Those runoff gorges are deep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The road winds through the cliffs and valleys of the area for about 30 miles.  The faces of the bluffs are striped horizontally with red, grey and yellow.  The whole area is covered with patches of these bluffs interspersed with sections of prairie and prairie dog towns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also stopped at the "Wall Drug",  a world famous tourist trap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It consists of a series of adjacent buildings that have been combined into one large tourist shopping mall.  The aisle leads from front to back with different "departments" opening off it.  Then you can wend your way through this door or that and get totally lost.

 

On the way back we had a horrendous side wind from the right.  We thought the run to Center of Nation had a bad wind, it was nothing, this was BAD!!

About halfway back to Rapid City we stopped for a Pepsi at "The World's Smallest Biker Bar".  This is the back side.  It used to be a two-car garage but now sells beer, soda pop and has a small stage and a pole for dancers.  We were the only customers at 11:30 in the morning and no dancers were in sight!

 

 

 

 

After a stop Firehouse Brewing for lunch and at the Honda dealer for a new headlight bulb we rode to the Stav Kirke.  A duplicate of the wooden church in Borglund, Norway.  The woodwork in these churches is very fine.  The entire building is made of wood in a post and beam construction style.  There are carved panels at the alter and by the doors.  We had seen and toured several of these churches while we were in Norway.

That ended Saturday and we were glad we had survived the wind on the freeway.

 

 

 

On Sunday we rode the Needles Highway again, but this time in the opposite direction.  It is still spectacular.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are on our way to Deadwood, the gambling center for the Black Hills.  This is an old gold mining town from the late 1800's.  It has gambling casinos down both sides of the main street.  Bikes are parked everywhere and lots of people are wandering and looking but the slot machines are nearly empty of gamblers.  We are here to look and so that Kathy can donate $20 to the one armed bandits.  I'm doing the latest upload of these pages, the gambling does not interest me in the least.

 

 

 

 

But I did find this motorcycle from Colorado very interesting.

Notice the front fender, here's a close-up of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow will be a maintenance day, laundry, replace the burnt out headlight, etc.  We don't plan on doing any riding.  Our Italian friend Maurizio and his group will be arriving during the day and we will go greet them.

So follow us on the next update whenever it happens.