Day Six - Thursday

Because of Rick's accident and the delays associated with it, I have forgotten to update the number of miles traveled on our journey. So....it is about 1130 pm on Thursday and we have traveled 2201 miles. That has included our actual trip to Sturgis today.

The ride to Sturgis from our hotel in Hot Springs is almost 85 miles. So it is just like going to work for me! The scenery was beautiful. Rolling hills and areas that have viscious crosswinds tend to keep you alert. Eighty miles per hour is slow to these folks out here. This is probably one of those places where distance is measured in time and not in miles. Originally, we had wanted to spend two nights and three full days in the Sturgis area. Since we are a day behind, we have to cram a lot of stuff into a short period of time.

The first thing we did in Sturgis was find a place to eat breakfast. After that we took a few minutes to take pictures of Main Street and all of the bikes. Our next quest was for t-shirts and whatever other stuff we could find to attempt to max out our credit cards. We were only able to spend about three hours in Sturgis. It was a perfect example of "been there, done that, got the t-shirt".









Motorcycles, motorcycles, and more motorcycles. You would think that someone arranged for these 525,000 people to all be here at the same time!!

Before leaving Sturgis, Mark and I found out where the hospital was located just in case Rick wants to come out here with us again. hahahaha













Our next stop after leaving Sturgis was Black Hills Harley-Davidson in Rapid City. This place was almost a busy as Sturgis! They had numerous vendors selling everything from exhaust pipes to gel-pack seat cushions to all sorts of trinkets and patches. This is also a full service Harley dealer and they had every kind of

service available. Really a pretty impressive operation. There was also all sorts of food being cooked and served. We looked around and spent a little more money here and then headed for Mount Rushmore.

Mount Rushmore was very impressive, but it was hard to get close enough to take a good picture with the amount of zoom that I have on my little travel camera. The visitor center charged eight dollars to park....just seemed like a lot to go and take a few pictures. We drove past the monument and found an area to get a good profile of George Washington.























After seeing Rushmore, we found an air conditioned place to eat. The near 100 degree heat was intensified by the slow driving and heavy traffic.

After eating, we rode back to the hotel to relax for a few moments and go through our stuff. We have now successfully acquired more stuff than we can carry on our bikes. That means that we will have to find a UPS store tomorrow and send a bunch of stuff back home.

We went out to eat at a steak house, came back to the hotel and spent probably an hour in the pool and hot tub. This was a relaxing end to an enjoyable but hot day.

Tomorrow we plan to drive up to Spearfish and Deadwood to take a scenic drive that is recognized as one of the most beautiful in the area. After that, we will be heading south into Wyoming with our Friday night destination of a hotel near Boulder, CO.