Sturgis Day 3: Into the Madness

Last night we watched a pretty awesome lightning show -- after Donna woke me and Lin up at 1:30 AM. It really was spectacular, but I'm glad that we saw it from a distance. We met some folks this afternoon who had been caught in the storm. They didn't think it was so spectacular from their point of view. Apparently the concert at the Buffalo Chip was stopped because of the storm. Ah, the joys of summertime activities.

For those of you who have never visited the Black Hills in August, I can tell you that the weather this time of year is very similar to that of Northern Colorado. This means that in late July and early August the weather has this kind of Jekyll and Hyde personality. The mornings are beautiful and temperate, and the heating of the day boils up the afternoon thunder and lightning storms. Sometimes those lightning storms can last well into the night as they roll across the plains to the east, like they did last night.

Now that we have the camper up and we have settled into our new digs, we decided that it was time to brave the crowds. This morning it was breakfast at the Morningside Cafe then on to the Black Hills Harley Davidson shop in Rapid City.

This year, the crowds were something else. We thought the Black Hills were a mess for the 65th Rally? Everywhere we went today, the lines were more than twice what we saw in previous years. I can hardly wait to get to Sturgis on Thursday.

Now, I don't ride a Harley, but they have some pretty neat stuff and you can even buy stuff for your Honda. We have gotten a lot of leather goods at this place and the Kuriyaken tent has metric items (translation: Honda stuff).

We spent a couple of hours roaming the tents, deciding whether to spend money and on what, and getting patches sewn on our vests while we wandered the grounds. Then we went to the lot next door to see what they had over there (not much).

On a whim, we decided to ride out to Caputa to say goodbye to our old digs. It sure looked different than when we left it last year. Of course, it was pouring rain and the camper was still up.

After saying our goodbyes to the place we rode to for so many years, we headed back to our new home for the rally. Tomorrow morning we meet our friends from North Dakota for breakfast, then we ride the Black Hills.