I left the campsite for Strugis at about 8:00 this morning, having decided to put a patch on my motorcycle jacket. It felt like getting a tattoo. After taking one last stroll through Sturgis I found a place that would do it and had the patch sewn on and was on the road within the hour.
My new patch
On the way in to Sturgis I stopped to take a picture of a tree carving advertising a flower shop. It was sort of like our wood carvings but bigger and done from a tree and painted. It was really striking and quite attractive. Sometimes you just see neat things and this was one of them.
Shortly after crossing into Wyoming, I took the exit to Devil's Tower but first rode to the town of Aladdin, population 5. It has a 110 year-old mercantile store which would probably be typical of this type of store in the first half of the last century.
The Aladdin Mercantile interior
Sign outside the Aladdin store
The land has changed and has begun to rise and become rather rolling. On some sections of the highway one can see for kilometres from the high points. And the rock formations are a beautiful delicate red shade. This colour runs from Rapid City well into Wyoming.
Rock formations along the Belle Fourche River, WY
Red rock formations in Wyoming
Cresting a hill I saw the Devil's Tower about fifteen miles away. Even from that distance it is impressive. As I appraoched this formation I rode through the town of Hulett where I saw a 1922 Harley-Davidson. It is amazing that this bike was made when my 89 year-old father was a baby. It was my bad timing to be there on Monday when two days later was 'no panties Wednesday'. And no, I don't know any more than that but it sounds intriguing!
1922 Harley-Davidson
The Devil's Tower is about nine miles from Hulett and the road was twisty and fun to ride. From close up this is one of the most impressive geological formations I have ever seen. It rises directly from the prairie about 1300 feet into the sky. It was the setting for the 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The weather and light was perfect so I was able to get some good photos from close up. Apparently this was a volcanic intrusion which cooled down so slowly that huge six and seven sided columns formed. Geologists believe that the last huge piece to fall off the formation did so about 10 000 years ago.
The Devil's Tower
The Devil's Tower
After stopping in Sundance to gas up I made a straight run to Gillette where I stopped at the Harley shop for a break then hit the road again. I continued to meet groups of riders presumably heading to Sturgis. About ten miles west of Gillette I met a group of about eight riders followed by a car and two more riders. As I glanced to my left I was stunned to see one of the bikes behind the car leave the pavement and go into the grassy median ahead of me. The bike was approaching me and fishtailing raising clouds of dust. I hit my brakes but couldn't slow down too much because I was being followed by a semi. As I met the other bike the fishtailing became more violent and after I passed the bike I watched in my mirror the bike went down in a large cloud of dirt. The people behind him stopped but I continued on because the semi was close behind me and I couldn't phone for help, I have no medical knowledge, and others were already stopping to help. I did report that I had seen it when I got to Buffalo.
Volcanic rock near Buffalo
Panorama near Buffalo, WY
The afternoon storm was approaching so I decided to call it quits for the day in Sheridan, Wyoming. Tomorrow I plan to ride to Cody then push on into Yellowstone Park to see Old Faithful and perhaps Mammoth Falls, The Paint Pots, and other attractions before ending up in Bozeman or Butte, Montana. Today was a shorter ride but I saw a lot. Wyoming and the high plains are really beautiful in a different way than the Canadian prairies.The land is harsher and more intense than I'm used to seeing and I am continually amazed by the work that the pioneers in this land were able to do to survive here.
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