I like to sleep with the curtains open. I enjoy waking up with the moonlight making the room glow, and having the morning sun streaming in. The Tundra Girl does not. She wants the room completely dark. Every shade pulled. As with most marriages, "if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" so I concede the curtain argument. However, when I go on my motorcycle trips I seize the opportunity to open up the blinds.
On this particular day I awoke to what seemed like a camera flash in the midst of my dream. I opened my eyes and thought, "was that lightning?" No sooner had the synapses fired to trigger that thought when the ground shook with thunder. It was storming.
Most other days of a motorcycle trip this would have been concerning. On this particular day, however, it was less of a worry. I really didn't have a set agenda or anywhere I needed to be by a certain time. I decided there wasn't any need for me to hurry out the door this morning so I could take my time and let the storm pass through. I fell back asleep.
I woke back up around 7 AM. My body being on central time, it felt like 8 AM which was an hour and half later than I usually woke. So I felt well rested, which is actually somewhat unusual for a motorcycle trip where by day three I'm normally starting to feel physically beat.
It was still raining steady. I decided to try and wait out the rain before I went anywhere, so there was no sense hurrying as I got ready.
I walked over to the hotel office building and grabbed a cup of coffee and a couple of breakfast rolls. Then I went back to my room and relaxed for a couple of hours. I spent some time working on my web site, which is really unusual for me to do in the midst of a trip. I also spent some time reading the book I had brought with me.
Around 10:30 there was still a light rain falling, but the skies looked like they were starting to clear up. I started to see other motorcyclists going by on highway 385. I checked radar and it looked like things were clear, although there was a bit of a storm to the south in the direction I was intending to head. I decided to go ahead and get ready, hoping that the last of the rain would move through before I did.
The temp was in the mid 50s, but I decided to go without chaps, my ear warmers and neckie. I hoped that as the rain passed through and the middle of the day arrived that it would quickly be warming up. It was nice that I was returning to the hotel that same day so I didn't have to pack all of my luggage.
Shortly after 11 AM I was on the bike. The pavement was still wet in places, but there wasn't any rain falling. The breakfast rolls weren't very filling so my first goal was to ride somewhere to get some lunch. In Hill City, which was about an hour south, there is a famous restaurant called the Alpine Inn. They specialize in German cuisine. I had eaten there about 15 years prior and it was delicious, so I decided that would be a good first destination.
I pulled out and headed south. I didn't make it hardly a block when I looked at my left mirror and noticed it was about to fall off. I pulled off into a parking lot and inspected it. It had come completely unscrewed by about four turns. I use my mirrors often enough that I'm pretty sure it wasn't that way when I pulled into the hotel parking lot the previous night. And if vibration had loosened it, the mirror would have just flopped down and the weight would have kept it from spinning around four times.
So I highly suspect somebody was screwing with my bike during the night. I fixed the mirror and then gave the remainder of the bike a once-over looking for anything else that seemed out of place. Nothing did. I'm thinking a drunk coming home from the casino must have been monkeying with my mirror. My bike was parked up by the trolley stop at the office. I made a mental note to park it closer down to my room window when I returned, although as I already observered yesterday, that's not going to make a whole lot of difference while I'm asleep.
South of Deadwood highway 385 heads up a small mountain for a few miles. It got noticeably colder as I gained elevation, but I hoped that as I came down the other side the temp would rise back up. Well, it did, but not as much as it had dropped. At the bottom of the mountain about six miles from deadwood it was quite chilly. Plus, it was starting to rain. The system I saw on the radar hadn't yet moved through. There was plenty of blue sky visible to the north and the east, but the clouds above me were dropping moisture.
It wasn't a heavy rain. Had it been warmer out I probably would have just ridden on and dealt with being a little wet. But with the cold temps it pushed me over the edge so I pulled over and put on my rain gear. It wasn't so much for protection from the moisture as it was to give me another layer of warmth.
Back on the road wearing my Wal-Mart hunting department rain suit, I was much more comfortable temperature-wise even though it looked like I had just donned a Hefty bag. I continued on my merry way. About 25 miles from Deadwood I reached Lake Pactola which is a very scenic area. I stopped and snapped a few photos, although I didn't get off the bike where I would have likely gotten better shots.
About 15 miles further down the road was Sheridon Lake, which is another very scenic spot. I pulled over and snapped a few photos here as well.
I arrived in Hill City a couple of ticks after noon. Hill City is a popular tourist area, so as expected there were a lot of people milling around and a lot of cars parked. I found the Alpine Inn and wound up parking about a block away.
Then I went inside of the Alpine Inn. It was a little fancier than I remembered, and I was dressed like a guy who had been riding his motorcycle for three days. Nevertheless I decided to go ahead and eat there. If people wanted to stare, let them.
I also was surprised when they had a sign up that said, "cash only." I mostly use a credit card while traveling, so I had to do a quick inventory check to make sure I had enough bills to cover the meal. I did.
I ordered the Montecristo, which is basically a ham, turkey and swiss sandwich which comes between slices of french toast dusted with powdered sugar. It came with a raspberry dipping sauce and hot German potato salad. It was delicious. I could have easily eaten two of them.
As I ate my lunch I stared out the window across the street and thought, "Hmmm.. that looks like my friend Jason." But being 400 miles from home I assumed it was just a coincidence. Then I noticed his car had Sioux Falls license plates on it. Also a coincidence, I suppose. Pretty soon the guy pulled a bicycle out of the truck. "Hmmm.. Jason rides a bicycle."
I paid for my lunch and walked outside to where the guy was digging something out of the back of the truck. I couldn't tell for sure and I felt a little like a stalker hanging around the area until he was done and pulled his head out. Sure enough, it was indeed Jason.
He greeted me with a hug and we chatted for a few minutes. He was in the area and was spending his day riding the Mickelson Trail from Hill City up to Lead, SD. His wife was dropping him off and he was about to depart.
After bidding him farewell, I spent a few minutes browsing the souvenir shops. Most of the time I have no need for what they sell, but this particular day I was looking for something specific. I tend to lose wedding rings. I'll take them off while I'm working on something and they'll fall out of my pocket. Or sometimes they just fall off and I don't notice. In any event, because of this my "real" wedding ring is kept at home in a box. For day-to-day use I wear a plain stainless steel ring that won't cause as much heartache if I happen to lose it.
In fact, I did lose my real wedding ring for about seven years once. By chance I found it underneath the seat of a car I was cleaning out before I sold it. During this time I purchased the stainless steel band to wear until the day came when I either found my original, or I decided to spring for a nice replacement ring. When I finally found the original, I figured it would probably be smart to just keep wearing the stainless steel band and put the real ring somewhere safe.
All that being said, I had lost a couple stainless steel rings and was wearing the last one in my possession. Gift shops like the ones in Hill City often have them for sale, so I figured I might grab a couple while I was there. Unfortunately, in all the shops I looked at none of them had stainless steel rings. So I decided I'd try Keystone when I passed through that town later in the afternoon. The ring I was currently wearing actually came from Keystone about 12 years prior.
Having seen what I wanted to see in Hill City, it was time to ride some more. I planned to take the "back way" over to Keystone, then ride a loop on the Old Playhouse Road and back to Keystone via the Iron Mountain road where I would take another break. From there I wanted to explore the Rockerville Road which I had never been on.
I started by riding down the Old Hill City Road. This road follows the same path that the 1880 Train follows, so there were at least a dozen times when it would cross the railroad tracks.
On this road is Camp Judson which is a summer camp I attended from 4th grade through 10th grade. I could have attended another year, but I chose to work a summer job instead. Dumb. I should have gone to camp. I would have the rest of my life to work, but a finite number of times I could go to camp. Lots of memories at this camp, although they've replaced a lot of the buildings since I was last there 35 years ago.
About a mile from Camp Judson was "Kemps Kamp" which is a little campground I remember seeing every time we came to Camp Judson. I stopped and snapped a photo, then sent it to my brother just for nostalgic purposes.
At one point I came around a corner and nearly took out two wild turkeys. I would have loved to have snapped a picture, they they had places to go and took off before I could grab a photo.
As I passed through Keystone I thought a restroom break would be good. There are public restrooms near the parking lot. I pulled into the lot and started looking for a space. Pretty soon I was probably 500 yards from the restrooms and still hadn't found a parking spot, so decided I didn't need to go that bad and pulled back onto the highway.
Further down the highway to the east of Keystone I took a right onto the Old Playhouse Road. I had ridden this road with Jon back in 2016, but it was starting to get dark and we were coming from the opposite direction. I figured it would be interesting to see it from a different perspective.
The road was pretty nice, with lots of hills and curves. I wound up behind a RV pulling a mini van who was going very slow. An RV and a mini van is a double-whammy. Thankfully after a couple of miles they realized traffic was backing up behind them so they pulled over and let us pass.
Old Playhouse Road crosses Iron Mountain Road and continues down to the Needles highway in Custer State Park. I wasn't planning on going that far, so I took a right on Iron Mountain which would loop me back towards Keystone. There were quite a few places on this road to snap pictures. Mount Rushmore is visible in many parts of this road, although with my camera a lot of them were in the distance. Like this one...
This road has a lot of twists and turns. I've ridden it several times before, although I think it's always been in the opposite direction.
There are several tunnels along this route. The first one I came to was the Scovel Johnson Tunnel. It frames Mt. Rushmore as you go through, although the light difference from the dark tunnel to the light mountain washed out my cheapo camera.
I slowly putted along and snapped photos. This isn't the highway you take if you want to make good time, as all the vehicles were moving slow and stopping for photos.
I came across one spot with an excellent view of Mount Rushmore. I pulled out my camera and took a picture. It wasn't until later that I realized that somehow I only got Lincoln's head in the picture. Not sure how that happened. Unfortunately had it turned out this probably would have been the best picture of Mount Rushmore I would have taken on this trip.
Iron Mountain Road features several "pigtail" bridges, that wrap around themselves like a pig's tail as you go up/down the mountain. The spots that had the best view of the bridges didn't have a shoulder where I could safely pull over. This was the best photo I got of one of the pigtail bridges.
I came off the mountain and rode into the city of Keystone with the intention of hanging around for a little while. Once again I pulled into the parking lot, only this time I found a spot much closer to the main drag.
I used the restroom and proceeded to browse the shops. I came across an ice cream shop that looked pretty good. I decided I would finish browsing the stores and then come back and get a cone before I left town. I resumed my search for a stainless steel ring, but didn't find any I liked. I wanted just a plain silver band with no ornamentation. Everything I found was too fancy for my taste.
I made it up one side of the street and was about to cross over to the other when I noticed some really dark clouds rolling in. I was pretty certain that if I hung around we would get rained on. Then I would either be riding in the rain, or sitting hostage in Keystone until the storm blew through.
A quick decision was made, and I abandoned my search for the ring and quickly made my way back to the bike. I also abandoned my ice cream cone. Bummer. Oh well, it's not like this fat boy never gets fed. I donned my gear and pulled out of the parking lot just as the first sprinkles of the storm started falling.
The storm wasn't moving unusually fast, so I was able to stay just at the front of it until I got a few miles east of Keystone. Then I zigged on Rockerville Road and the storm zagged and in a couple minutes I was out of it with nothing more than a few drops of rain on me as a result.
Rockerville Road was a new one for me. In the dozens of times I've been in the Black Hills, either on motorcycle or car, I've never had a reason to go down this road. So that was neat to see a new road in a fairly familiar region.
The road ended at highway 16. I took a right and headed towards Rapid City. At the 16 bypass road I went left and cut through the southwestern edge of the city to the Sheridon Lake road, then doubled back heading away from town.
This is a pretty road. Some of the curves are quite tight which results in low speeds. Also there's a bit of residential homes in certain spots, so you need to be careful of cars entering and exiting drives.
The storm had passed by to the south, and the sun had come out for the moment. I was tooling along at what I thought was a pretty good pace when I saw a little red Miata closing behind me. The guy was getting closer and closer and I decided he was wanting to be more aggressive than I, so I pulled over and let him by. He waved "thanks" as he went around and quickly disappeared around the next bend.
The road came to a "T" at the highway 385 junction. It was now about 3 PM and I was a little less than an hour from Deadwood. My options at this point were to either head back towards the hotel, or in the opposite direction down towards the Hill City/Custer area. I decided to head back to Deadwood. If when I got there I wanted to keep riding I could always go the scenic way to Spearfish. Or if when I got there I was tired of riding I could call it a day.
I had ridden this stretch of highway a few hours earlier, so there was less to see on the way back. A little south of Lake Pactola I started to feel sprinkles. The sky looked like it was going to rain again. Plus the temp never really got above 65 degrees, so it was chilly. I decided to pull over and put my rain gear on. Again, even if it didn't rain much I figured the extra warmth would be nice.
It sprinkled a bit and then stopped. But I left the rain gear on because it was chilly without it.
I got to the edge of Deadwood around 4 PM. I decided that given the temps, I was done riding for the day. I'd rather relax in the hotel room for a while before I went downtown for supper. However, I wanted to top off my gas tank so it was ready for the ride home in the morning.
There's really only one gas station in Deadwood, and it's an old fashioned "service station" that sells gas and does repairs, but doesn't have the convenience store aspect. I had missed my ice cream in Keystone and was kind of hankering for a snack. So I decided to ride into Lead to get gas. Lead is less than a mile from Deadwood, so it really wasn't much farther than riding to the gas station in Deadwood.
The convenience store was on top of a huge hill, not far from the old Homestake gold mine. The mine is now an underground science laboratory. I filled up the tank, then went inside and bought a soda and a candy bar. Not as glamorous as an ice cream cone, but a snack nonetheless.
As I mentioned, the gas station was on top of a big hill. My hotel was near the bottom of the big hill. I pondered that perhaps one could just coast all the way down without using any gas? Well, why ponder? I got the bike rolling down the hill. The hill was quite steep and I had to ride the brakes a lot to keep the speed under the 25 mph limit.
The bike was starting to slow down last 100 yards or so to the hotel parking lot, but I managed to make it the whole way: 2.1 miles without using any gas. Kind of dumb, but it was a fun little challenge to try.
I was back in the hotel about quarter after four. I figured I'd relax for a couple hours and then catch the 6:15 trolley downtown for some supper.
I read my book and enjoyed my snack, and was channel surfing when I found a program called "Dr. Pimple Popper" that was morbidly fascinating. You can surmise the premise from the title.
At 5:40 I saw the trolley go by. It always passes by the hotel heading south, makes a stop a mile up the road, then comes back and stops at the Thunder Cove Inn. So when you see it go by the first time you know you have about five minutes to get down to the stop in front of the hotel. During weekdays the trolley runs every half hour, if they're running on time. Seeing this trolley was right on schedule, I expected the next trolley to pick me up at 6:15.
I happened to be glancing out the window at 6:05 and saw the next trolley pull up at the stop. What?!!! That didn't seem right. I should have had ten more minutes. Maybe just this trolley is running ahead of schedule? But if I don't grab this one then I'd have to wait until 6:45 before the next one shows up? Aaaugh!
I hesitated for a moment wondering what to do, then decided to see if I could catch this one before it took off. Usually they don't wait too long at a stop if nobody is standing there, but this one seemed to be pausing for a moment. I hastily grabbed everything I needed and bolted out the door. I didn't even turn the TV off, which is pretty weird for me because I'm usually pretty energy conscious.
I flew down the stairs and out the door and ran towards the stop. The driver saw me and waited. As I got on and paid my dollar he said that I got lucky that he had stopped for a minute to update his clipboard, as normally he would only pause a few seconds if nobody was waiting. I acknowledged his statement as true, and then made mention that I wasn't expecting him until 6:15.
He explained that there was a big event starting the next day so they were running three trolleys for the rest of the week. That meant the trolleys were hitting stops at 20 minute intervals rather than 30. So had I missed this one I would have been able to catch the next one at 6:25. Except that I didn't know that and probably would have just waited for the 6:45 trolley.
The driver was nice and I was the only person on the bus for a few stops, so we chatted a bit. Then other riders started to get on as we got closer to the main strip. I tried to take some pictures, but the trolley is pretty bumpy and it was hard to get shots that weren't blurry.
I got off at the Franklin Casino. In the basement they have a steakhouse called the Legends. I had never eaten there before, but heard it was pretty good so I decided to give it a try. The waitress told me it would be a 20 minute wait, or I could sit immediately at the bar. As I was eating alone there wasn't any reason I couldn't sit at the bar and save a table for people who were waiting for one, so I said the bar would be fine.
I sat next to a woman who proceeded to get drunker the whole time I was sitting there. She wasn't obnoxious or annoying, but it was obvious she was soused. I also learned that her brother was the bartender, and she was sitting there because her car broke down and she wasn't sure what to do. Her brother kept assuring her that he thought it was the alternator and he could get it fixed the next day.
Speaking of the bartender brother, he was also my waiter and was amazing. Very attentive with just the right amount of social interaction. He explained the menu and gave me suggestions when I asked. I wound up giving him about a 33% tip because I was so impressed with his service.
I ate a 16 oz ribeye with au gratin potatoes (waiter's suggestion), green beans and a house salad. The food was excellent. I'll definitely be returning the next time I'm in Deadwood. It was a little more expensive than the previous evening's buffet, but there was no question with how much better the food was.
After I was good and full, I left the casino and walked down the street. I noticed that the temp had risen to the warmest it had been all day. It probably was in the low 70s now. I was wearing my jacket, but really didn't need it.
I browsed a few shops along main street still looking for that elusive ring. Didn't find one. Then I saw the trolley coming and hopped on it for the ride back to the hotel. It was the same driver who brought me downtown and he recognized me. We chatted a bit more.
As we rode through town making stops I attempted to take some more pictures, again made tricky by the bumpiness of the trolley ride. So they too came out a little blurry.
Back at home I called my wife and gave her a brief summation of the day. She had some stuff going on so we didn't talk as long as normal, but I was OK with that as I wanted to get packed a prepared for the trip home tomorrow. We'd have plenty of time to talk when I got home.
I showered and packed everything I could. Then I crawled in bed and read for a while before finally turning the lights out around 10:30.
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This page last updated on 08/29/2018