Corner To Corner - Chatper 11, The Wild Wild West

Another warm and sunny day this morning as we loaded up outside the Holiday Inn in Sturgis. We wore our “biker” ripped off sleeve button up shirts we bought yesterday for the ride out, after making one last loop through the Sturgis Main Street. Loading up the bikes every morning is a little ritual – hauling the suitcases downstairs, strapping them to the bike, putting my note-pad and pen to take notes with and my I-Pod in the tank bra, taping up my directions on the yellow sticky note, and spraying on sun-screen, strapping the helmet on, and so on. Tony and I do our glove touch and roll out.

After our detour down Main Street one last time, we headed West on SD-34. More and more bikers came in, and we passed an endless stream of them on the road headed towards Sturgis. I realized we have to come back and spend some more time as. As it gets closer to the rally starting, more vendors are arriving and setting up. One we saw setting up this morning was doing trike conversions on Honda Goldwings. Tony said "hell, might as well add a fourth wheel and call it a Civic". Everyone we talk to says we should come early and leave early before the crowds, which sounds like a plan to me for next year.

We headed up into the Black Hills on SD-34 towards the town of Belle Fourche. This town has intrigued me for quite some time. One of my favorite movies is “The Cowboys” one of John Wayne’s last movies. If you recall the movie, there are no cowboys to take the cattle to market, so John Wayne hires out the school kids – all 12 years old or so. He gets killed along the way and the cattle stolen and the boys become men by rounding them up and killing the guys who stole the cattle and then driving them into Belle Fourche. So for that reason, plus it sounds somewhat “romantic” in an old-west kind of way, so I wanted to see it. It was a small, charming town, with a lot of old west flavor still, and a rail-head with a large cattle lot – and to this day it’s used just like it was 100 years ago when the movie was set.

I got Tony a little biker bear that rides on his windshield as we left this morning -- its our 12th anniversary and this guy will keep him company on the long stretches as we head home. We turned west on US-212, which cut across the corner of Wyoming. As soon as we crossed the Wyoming line I felt I was getting closer to home – though not “home” as in Seattle. I grew up in Salt Lake City, and we spent a lot of time in Wyoming when I was younger – although it was the opposite corner the Southwest one. Still I was in Wyoming and that means we’ve come a long way from Florida and are getting closer to home.

One thing about the far west, the towns are a hell of a lot further apart. Even in sparsely populated South Dakota, we had small farm towns every 25 miles or so. In Wyoming and Montana, it’s more like 80! You go long long long stretches without passing a single car, or even a farm house. Somewhere in the middle of the Powder River Valley in the SE corner of Montana we stopped at the only town we’d come across, Broadus, MT, and the only gas station to fill up and get a drink.

As we were filling up a group of riders headed towards Sturgis pulled in. By coincidence they were members of a Harley Owners Group Chapter that’s affiliated with the Marysville HD Dealer. Small world. We chatted for a bit, and as we were wearing our Sturgis shirts they asked how it was and this was their first trip. Since we have been we are no longer Sturgis virgins so we could fill them in (like we know anything, but I guess we looked like grizzled veteran bikers). They were all excited to go, until I asked them where they were staying and they answered “we don’t know we’ll figure it out when we get there.” I guess I had a look on my face as they said, “you don’t think that’s a problem do you?” Lets see, 10,000 bikers invading a town and you don’t have a hotel reservation. Yeah, I think so. We quickly gave them the number to the Holiday Inn Express we stayed as as they had mentioned they had some cancellations and told them to get on their cell phone now. As we pulled out we could see them huddled around one guy who was on the phone – lets hope they got something.

A bit further West on US-212 we ran into every biker’s nightmare. Road construction. Miles of it. It appears they were widening and repaving the highway, and it involved us riding for about 9 miles on dirt and gravel – very slowly – and waiting for pilot cars in the heat. Fortunately the flagman walking the line said “why don’t you guys cut to the front of the line so when the pilot car gets here you don’t have to wait behind all these trucks.” Needless to say we jumped at the chance. I don’t know why they needed to widen the road though – we maybe passed 10 cars in 50 miles – there just ain’t a lot of traffic out here.
It had started to get a bit hot and dusty as we rode across the Crow Reservation, so we stopped at a small town with a great Indian name – Lame Deer. There were two restaurants – one a bar with a sign that said Welcome Bikers, and had about 6 bikes in front, and the other, a café that said “Shakes”. We opted for “Shakes”, and were sorely disappointed that their ice cream machine was broken. This was also a local gathering spot, and the food was good, so we didn’t mind.

Unfortunately US-212 merges with the dreaded Interstate 90 at Crow Agency, Montana – where Custer’s Last Stand was fought. I felt like I’d been over-run as well having to get on the Interstate, but we had no choice. It also seemed like the rest of the biker world was headed to Sturgis while we were headed in the opposite direction. I’ve never seen so many bikes headed east on the freeway and on US-212. We didn’t pass a single bike headed West. In a way it makes me wish we were headed back that way. Fortunately it was only 60 miles to Billings, MT where we have camped out for the night.
Today was also about the last stretch of unknown road for us. Virtually all of the remaining route home is on roads we’ve ridden before. Indeed we are getting closer to home.