Alaska 2014 Week 2

   

June 2, We left Presho, SD and had a pretty busy day.  We headed for the Badlands, SD.

On the way, we stopped to see a Prairie Homestead located at the entrance to the Badlands park.  We’ve gone by there many times and always wanted to stop and check it out so today was the day that we did.  It was pretty interesting.  It was an actual house lived in by an actual prairie family.  Even though it was extremely rustic it had a homey feeling to it.  From there we went on to the Badlands.  We have been here many times before but this time we discovered they have wooden walkways to the best spots to take pictures.  It was great not having to climb up the mounds to get the good shots.  From the Badlands we drove to Wall.  We stopped in the town for ice cream and soda and visited a few of the shops.  We mainly wanted to show Wall to Mem and Larry.  You can’t come thru Wall without stopping.  From Wall we went to Sturgis, SD.  We went to our regular campground, the No Name City Campground.  We have stayed here many times for Bike Week.  Unfortunately, the campground has been sold 2 times since we first started coming to the campground.  Jim and I were good friends with the original owners and really enjoyed our time at this campground.  We would stay a month at a time and became like family.  The second owners seemed very nice but they didn’t even last a year.  We have no idea what happened to them.   The new owners seem nice and his father use to own a campground close by and now own a diner outside of Sturgis and he is helping his son with No Name so I hope he makes a go of it.  We really like this Campground and would hate to see it close down.  We stayed a few days here and visited a few of the Black Hills must see places

June 3 we visited Mt. Rushmore.  We visited the Borglum museum first to get the history of why Borglum chose the site and the presidents he chose to carve.  Then we are lunch at Keystone at one of the saloons.  We then went over to the monument.  I love the side view of Washington.

June 4  We went to Deadwood and met up with friends that we met at No Name City during Bike Week about 3 years ago for lunch.  We had a wonderful time catching up with Ken and April and hope to meet up with them again in Las Vegas next winter.  I have to give Ken credit for teaching me how to be a better motorcycle rider on these black hills in SD.  He sketched out the hills on paper and showed me where I needed to position my bike when I took the corners on the hills and I tell you I became a much more confident rider after that year riding up here in the Black Hills.   After lunch, we took the trolley tour over to see Wild Bill Hitchcock’s grave and some other points of interest in Deadwood.  Then we took a ride through Spearfish Canyon and took pictures at the Bridal Veil Falls.

June 5  We drove to Devils Tower.  It was disappointing.  It was a cloudy day and you could barely see the tower.  We went into the visitor’s center and picked up some brochures and tried to kill some time waiting for the clouds to clear up but it only cleared a little.  Mem, Larry and Jim walked up the walkway a little ways to see if they could see anything but it never did clear up enough to see it.

June 6  Jim has always wanted to see Custer’s last stand.  Needless to say that was our next stop.  The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument was very interesting.  We watched a very informative video and then went out onto a covered patio and listened to a Park Ranger interpretive program “Battle Talk”.  The Park Ranger has studied Little Bighorn Battle for over 20 years and was very informative.  He is a college professor during the winter months and a park ranger during the summer months so it was quite a treat to get his version of the battle.  The thing that I could hardly believe was that LTC Custer was known for always being lucky on the battlefield so when he got orders to go battle with the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Little Bighorn he was so sure of his victory he invited his family members to come along to see his victory.  And the end result was that he and all of his soldiers and family members met their death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.

We spent the next two days working out way through Montana to Glacier National Park.