Mt. Rushmore

Friday, July 27, 2007

This morning we decide to take the Mt. Rushmore trip. We head to Deadwood and go through town to find route 385 to Mt. Rushmore. The road is full of curves, uphills and downhills a lot of different speeds. We wind our way around and through the hills and finally heading uphill we start to see the famous faces on the side of the mountain. What a view!

We arrive to the entrance to the parking lot, and wait there is a parking fee. The fee for an auto is $8.00, a motor home $10.00 and a bus $50.00. We get to the gate to pay and they tell us it will be $16.00 for the two motorcycles. Wait, we can see the famous faces down the road, so turn around and head back. We go about 1 mile down the road to get our pictures. It is like about the 3 time to Rushmore for Nancy and the 2 time for Tom. Enough! All our other ventures we had a senior pass to National Parks and that gets both of us in.

From Mt. Rushmore we think we will take the way into Rapid City. We arrive in Rapid City and think we should fill the gas tanks. From the filling station Nancy sees a Black Hills Gold Jewelry Outlet. We had to go and check it out. Nancy just can't find anything she wants, so we leave. Thinking we should go into the Harley Shop we head north out of town.

Finding the Harley shop we made a few wrong turns, but we did arrive and look at the shop. They are setting up lots of tents for the Sturgis Bike Rally. They are not dealing on motorcycles, so we head out. Before we head out we ask the salesman if there is a back road we can take to get to Sturgis. Wow, we asked the right person. He told us the back roads and what a ride it was. Remember how I said we had a few 8% grades (?) well this route gave us a few 10% grades. I am certainly learning how to make the curves and hills much easier.

We stopped along the way at the little creek running beside the road. Nancy wanted to take pictures. It was a great stop, very photo perfect.

Arriving in Sturgis we made our way back to the campsite via Main Street and Lazelle Street. They set up more tents every day. We stop and look at a few of the different tents. What an assortment of t-shirts. Every shop has zillions of tees, not what we want. We are looking for saddlebags for Nancy and roll bags for both Tom and Nancy.

Arriving back at the campsite for a few hours, then we go to Pizza Hut for dinner. When we are finished eating we walk outside to rain. Oh well, they need rain here in Sturgis so we ride home in the rain. What a wonderful day. We rode about 150 miles today.