Tuesday, August 5th
No real miles
It was a beautiful day so we grabbed some grub at the camp kitchen and rode into Sturgis to walk the strip with Noah & Bert.
Bert is wearing a neck brace because she was in a car that got rear-ended by an inattentive driver. Julie and Bert liked to go into the shops while Noah & I preferred to stay outside and swill beer and watch the scenery.
Julie bought a nice vest and Noah & Bert took us to an underground bar with underwear hanging from the ceiling. It rained for a few miutes from sunny skies.
At night we went to see the Black Oak Arkansas band featuring Jim Dandy. They were entertaining. Julie thought Jim Dandy was disgusting, but in a good way. There was a woman with two tiny chihuahua dogs. They were perfectly quiet until they would hear someone say "who let the dogs out". Then they would both begin to sing with real soulful expressions on their faces. It was hilarious.
When we got back to camp we met Ron & Virgie from Kansas and Tim "Snake Charmer" from Georgia. Tim had caught just a rattlesnake in the campsite.
He thought it was dead because he whacked it with a stick, but it seemed to come back to life later on. Tim said it was a good thing he waited for a while, because he had planned to put the "dead" snake in his father's sleeping bag as a joke. Now he said he was going to cook the snake for breakfast.
Julie was a little jumpy after the snake incident so she let out a yell in the tent when she flipped over her sleeping bag and there was a bungee cord lurking underneath it.
Wednesday, August 6th
190 miles, 45 miles per gallon.
Julie and I went riding around the Black Hills area. We went to Rapid City and to Mount Rushmore. We told some Mexican bikers that one of the guys carved on Mount Rushmore was Jack Daniels. Later, we stopped at a fish hatchery where we threw food to rainbow trout that averaged fifteen pounds each. We had one last night camping at Sturgis. Tomorrow, westward!
Thursday, August 7th
We only had to get as far as Buffalo, Wyoming today, so we got up and packed the bike kind of slowly. It looked like a nice day. Heading west out of Sturgis, we went through Sundance, Wyoming and then went to take a look at Devil's Tower. It looked good from a distance but when we got close there was a long line of cars, bikes, and RVs lined up at the park gate, so we just took a look and headed out.
I saw a huge rattlesnake sunning on the side of the road. We stopped for gas in Moorcroft, then cruised on to Buffalo. When we got to the Best Western in Buffalo, we met an Iron Butt rider who was taking his Beemer to the start of an eleven-day, eleven-thousand mile ride. The pace he described made us feel like snails by comparison.
Friday, August 8th
I got up early because I was looking forward to seeing the mountains. We started off on hiway 16, heading through Ten Sleep to Worland. The mountains were visible in the distance. At Worland the bike turned south to Thermopolis. We saw the hot springs. They smelled like sulfer, but not too strong. The road followed the Wind River through the reservation to Dubois. The scenery was beautiful and the weather was perfect, and traffic was sparse.
We headed through the Rock Mountains into the Teton National Forest. The air smelled clean and fragrant. As we headed south into Jackson, the huge Teton mountain range rose up on our right. For the next few days, every time I saw these mountains I would seem to hear a low thundering majestic chord. The snow-capped tips of the mountains were like a saw blade cutting the sky. The view is breathtaking.
We made our way into Jackson and hung around waiting for the young folks to show up. This took a few hours due to a connection snafu at the airport, but finally we were all together.
