Day 10 Monday 8-6-12 Whatever!!

Today is a do your own thing day. Smurph left early to be first at the Vance & Hines tent in Sturgis to get true duals installed after he had visited the tent the day before and decided later in the day he'd do it. Of course when he got there they were out of them for his bike but had them back at the Black Hills Harley Dealer vendor tent area which he went right by on his way to Sturgis and could've saved 50 miles but more importantly time as now there were 5 bikes in front of him! He got back to the hotel about 12:30. Mark & Doreen went straight to Black Hills and got a Mustang seat for thier bike and also got back about 12:30. The rest of us slept in, did laundry, and I got 2 days worth of blogging caught up. Around 1, Mike/Annie & Mark/Doreen went for a ride to the Badlands National Park/Wall drug again as Doreen hadn"t been with us then. Steve/Sue/Smurph & I went for a ride on the wilderness loop on the south end of Custer State park. The nice part of this is that you can take Iron Mountain Road and Needles highway to get there!!! Unfortunately today there was a huge increase in the number of bikes compared to Saturday and it was pathetically slow going! Not the ride I was hoping for but still the scenery is magnificent. It was brutally hot again, like about 104, and there wasn't much wildlife out to see. We did see a single buffalo near the road, a bunch of mules eating evrything in site that people stopped to feed them, even though your not supposed to (SUE!!). Picture is not of Sue. We also saw what I think is an antelope.

Sue said she saw a herd of buffalo up in the tree line that I missed. We also came upon a sporster that didn't negotiate a turn and folks were pulling it out of the ditch. It appeared that no one got hurt (other than someones ego when hundreds of folks see you). We stopped for me to get water several times as I was getting dehydrated and felt it. On the way back we got diverted off 16 due to an accident that we could just see up the road that appeared to be bikes. In this mornings paper I read that 3 folks have died in bike accidents (not the one we saw) and 2 were due to speed & alcohol and the 3rd didn't negotiate a turn so that was probably speed or poor ability. You have to pay attention here as the scenery is breathtaking and the roads are twisty. We got back a little after 6 and went straight for the pool. Mark/Doreen & Mike/Annie got back around 7ish and joined us at the pool for cocktails. About 9:00 we walked down the street to a Texas Road House for dinner. Tomorrow were going to ride up to Spearfish area and do the canyon.