A Fine Ride

Thursday was our day to ride the Spearfish Canyon. This is one of the classic things to do when you are at the Black Hills Rally and it is well worth the time. Of course, to get to Spearfish it is necessary to ride through Sturgis, a daunting task on any day during Rally Week. Traffic is incredibly heavy and the only saving grace is that four motorcycles can fit in the space of an average car and it seems that riders tend to be more considerate of other riders than people in cages.

 

A burrito place. You can't beat their meat!

Downtown Sturgis

A vendor of 'intimate' items.

The Knuckle Saloon

Large Indian logo

Indian motorcycle

Downtown traffic

1940 Indian in unconventional colours



Since we had made it to downtown Sturgis, we parked in the free parking lot behind the Indian motorcycle display and made our way downtown to pick up some final items that we had missed on Wednesday. Then it was back into traffic and the final mile to Exit 32 and I-90. This part of our ride took well over half an hour simply because of the volume of people heading to Deadwood, Lead, and the Interstate. Sitting on top of a big engine that is throwing off heat when you are wearing leathers in 80+F heat isn't really that much fun, but it is part of the Sturgis experience.

Once we were free of traffic and heading east on I-90 the twenty miles to Spearfish went really quickly at 75 mph. Spearfish is a small town but I have no idea why it is there. We didn't actually go into town but took the road into the canyon. The canyon began not far out of Spearfish. Very quickly the canyon walls began to tower over the highway which snaked along the Spearfish River. The canyon is quite narrow so the road is quite twisty.

 

Motorcycle traffic in Spearfish Canyon, SD



Traffic is quite heavy but the speed limit is restricted to 35 mph so nothing really crazy happens. People are generally quite responsible in the canyon and it seems that there are rarely any problems. The ride for us was uneventful with stops at Bridal Veil Falls and the winter sports resort at the end of the canyon.

 

Motorcycles in Spearfish Canyon

 

Sometimes stupid happens. On the ride up the canyon I discovered that my GoPro battery was dead. I checked for the spared that I carry in my vest pocket but it wasn't there so I wasn't able to shoot any video of the canyon ride. What never occurred to me was that I had another battery in my saddlebag. I didn't figure it out until we were in Rapid City so I missed getting some video of the ride through this spectacular scenery. That was, I hope, my moment of stupid for this trip.

Bridal Veil Falls, Spearfish Canyon, SD

 



Garry spent time talking with two guys who had ridden quite a way to the rally. I met a family from Texas when I offered to take a photo of all of them together. They then posed with me. The were from Rio Vista, Texas, about sixty miles southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth. It is a place so small, that the husband joked that they had to leave someone behind to watch the dogs. They were really friendly and each of the three women gave me a hug when we parted.

 

The group from Rio Vista, Texas

 

Views from the Spearfish Canyon Resort

 





We rode on and took the highway back through Lead and Deadwood. Not wishing to face Sturgis traffic just yet and jonesing for a Starbucks coffee, we rode to Rapid City, found a Starbucks coffee shop, bought some decent coffee, then fired up our computers. I was able to write one blog entry but since we haven't had Wi-Fi for a few days I was still behind. But the coffee was great!

It was time to bite the bullet and head back to 'The Chip' to get ready for the evening's concerts and watch Doug Danger ride Evel Kneivel's Harley-Davidson XR750 to attempt the world record jump over twenty-two cars. The show started at 4:00 but the preliminaries lasted for two hours. The jump was successful and even though the last four cars were under the ramp, he cleared them all. One person noted that the twenty-one cars that Kneivel cleared were early '70s models that were considerably wider than the cars that Were line up for the jump at the ampitheatre so the jumps really weren't comparable.

We returned to our campsite where Mike made burgers and had a ham salad for all of us. It was a classy thing to do. After consuming a few Buds we made out way back to see Styx perform. They were really loud and people who've seen them before said that they had put on a great show. They were having fun and so was the audience. The lead singer even did a riff on Bohemian Rhapsody which was at least credible.

The next act was the Guess Who with out Bachman, Turner, or Cummings, so Garry and I headed back to camp early. We figured that we could listen from our tents and as it turned out we listened to the whole set. From what we could hear the songs were almost identical to the records from so long ago.

The day turned out to be somewhat relaxed. We didn't really push ourselves but we covered a lot of ground. The Plan for Friday was to head south to see Mount Rushmore and other attractions. Friday was the last full day at Sturgis before our departure on Saturday so we felt that we needed to at least see a few more things.