Connecticut to California – Day 4 – August 15, 2000
A while back, a friend of mine gave me the book, The Most Scenic Drives in America – 120 Spectacular Roads - Reader’s Digest General Books, 1997. I have essentially taken a selected group of these drives and put them together to form the basis of this trip. Today’s trip is # 55 – Badlands and Black Hills.
I peek out the window of my room and the sun is rising over the Badlands. You see – the Badlands is right across the road from my room – I can’t take a picture directly into the sun – but when I am sitting in the nursing home – this is one picture that I will be reliving – so if you visit me there and see me smiling quietly – remember August 15th in the Badlands.
Saw a sign along the road near the motel last night –
First Presbyterian Church – one block. This
is the First Presbyterian Church of Interior, SD and I work at the First
Presbyterian Church of Greenwich, CT. I
am the church administrator – which means I do all the non-God stuff – if
you want to see something about who I am and what I do – log on to www.fpcg.org
- I am biased, but I think it’s a pretty good church site.
I understand the sign in front of the church here – Divine Worship
every Sunday morning. On the other
hand – I can truly say that I have spent the entire day in “Divine
Worship” on the motorcycle.
I am on 240 through Badlands National Park and I am struck at the juxtaposition of the grasslands on one side of the road and the Badlands on the other. I can easily see how Native Americans cloud drive buffalo from the grasslands – over the precipice – I had read about it many times, but just never imagined in my mind what terrain could lend itself to that tactic. I hope you can see it in the pictures.
I turn off of 240 onto Sage Creek Rim Road – 25 miles of gravel road – and probably the most challenging driving portion of this trip. I ride across a cattle gate and suddenly realize that the fence is on the wrong side of the road. I am riding in the grassland pasture. I stop for a cup of coffee from the Thermos – I am alone – no sound but the sound of the wind. I close my eyes….I have been here before…..200 years ago perhaps…..a blanket on a pinto pony…..I love the solitude…..I heard voices and chants as I slipped off to sleep last night…..
I keep stopping to take pictures – I use every riding skill I ever learned – the road is like a washboard and there is three inches of loose gravel in every turn – but there are no SUV’s and no mini-vans with tinted windows – just me and an occasional pickup truck – the worship continues.
Perhaps this trip is the most selfish thing I have ever done in my life. This is for me – and for me – alone. But right now, on the Sage Creek Rim Road – I understand the sacredness of this selfishness. This is my time – others will benefit later – from the me who emerges from this selfish – yet sacred place.
The gravel ends near the town of Scenic and turn north on 44 through the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. I have to stop at a construction zone and wait 15 minutes for the pilot car to return and take us down the one lane road. I am first in line and the road guard just wants to talk motorcycles. He has a Wing – but he is walking around and around my Interstate. A pleasant way to pass a moment in his life and in my life – in the middle of nowhere – an interest shared – a brief interlude – he goes back to work and I’m riding again.
Visit my Texaco friends again in Rapid City – then I am south on 79 to 40 – to Mt Rushmore. I feel like I am completing a circle of sorts. You see, I live on part of the original Gutzon Borglum estate in Stamford, CT. Many years ago the Merritt Parkway was built across his land – and he sold off the far side. That’s where I live and the deed to the property still references it as a part of the Borglum property. His studio was located just across the parkway from my house on what is now known as Studio Road.
Met a young woman from Japan at the entrance sign to Mt Rushmore. She wanted me to take a picture of her beside the sign – then asked even more enthusiastically if I would take her picture next to my Valkyrie – such a big bike – such a small woman. It turns out that we see each other again at the foot of the mountain – I take her picture with the presidents – she takes my picture with the presidents – I compliment her on her English and she blushes. It feels good to find a neighbor and be a neighbor.
I’m gone from here very quickly. It is a must stop – but I never like to be where everyone else is – and I think I got a better picture of the mountain – shooting through the trees from the Peter Norbeck Scenic Highway identifiable on the map as 16A. This highway is a must see. Most of what I saw today is indescribable – maybe the pictures will help – but there just are not words to describe the sights, the smells, the changing temperature on your face – the 360 degree turns – I am not taking the pictures – I am in the picture.
Far better than Mt Rushmore is Custer State Park. I pay the $5.00 bike fee and find the Wildlife Loop. My senses are approaching overload with the beauty of this country. Perhaps I should have packed a book of adjectives – but surely I would have used them all by now. Breathtaking – yes; incredible – yes; and more. I am stopping too frequently to take pictures – I have many miles yet today – and will the beauty come through – perhaps some of it.
At the end of the Wildlife Loop I am north on 87 then south on 89 to 16A east then retrace my steps back down 87 to Wind Cave National Park. This loop again is phenomenally beautiful – but marred by big tour buses spewing foul smelling diesel exhaust. I don’t know what the solution is to accommodating all the people who want to visit these scenic places, but putting 60 of them on an air-conditioned bus with tinted windows and belching diesel exhaust is not the answer.
Is a Valkyrie finding Valhalla – something like finding the Holy Grail? If it is – then my quest is complete – Notwithstanding my ignorance and unfaithfulness – I have discovered Valhalla in the Black Hills – eat your heart out Brothers!
I am grateful to be in Wind Caves NP. Seemingly the minivan hordes have not found this place – and what a place it is. It’s vast grasslands and rolling hills make it easy for me to see thousands of buffalo grazing. Rarely do I see another vehicle and I am feeling good again. I pick up 385 and begin working my way north through Pringle and Custer. I am completely unprepared for the sight of the Pactola Reservoir. I am rolling on the throttle gently around a corner and there below me over the rise is unspeakable beauty – azure blue water in the middle of the Black Hills. Continuing to Deadwood – I come up behind two Harley riders – and within minutes my head is throbbing from the exhaust noise. I am clued in immediately to the inverse relationship between noise and speed. The louder it gets the slower it goes. I am grateful for a brief stretch of passing road – and quickly demonstrate the direct correlation between noise and speed on the Valkyrie. The increasing exhaust note clearly denotes rapidly increasing speed – and soon my headache is gone.
I continue north on 385 and 85 to I-90 once again, but this time for only one exit to the west – Super 8 in Spearfish, SD.Tomorrow is #35 – Devil’s Tower loop and I-90 to Billings, MT where I hope the folks at Montana Honda and Marine can provide a 12,000 mile service – on Thursday.
There will be no sunset or sunrise over the Badlands tonight – dinner at Perkins, though good, did not compare with “All you can eat Cowboy Stew” for $4.95. And if you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll let you in on the Cowboy Stew chef’s secret to success – a bottle of Corona emptied very deliberately and stirred very gently – about once per hour.
The bike trip meter says 296.9 the Garmin III+ trip meter
says 303.9 and I say Goodnight from Spearfish, South Dakota.
Connecticut Yankee in Yosemite Valley- the Trek
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