Adam's Blog July 31th, Day 26
Not much planned today other than getting from Montana down to the Black Hills in South Dakota to our next cluster of stuff to see. We start the day in the normal way. Breakfast at the hotel with a little bit of Gideon arguing about what he's eating, pack all of the stuff in to the car, get some gas and ice and head out to the road. The big thing that's different today is that when we hit the highway there is almost no one on it. Not unusual for the side roads for Route 66 but for an interstate highway this just feels odd. That and the posted speed limit is 80 so we could get out of there as soon as possible. Nothing eventful in Montana and we swing back down into Wyoming for a short while on our way in.
By lunch time we are all a bit sick of being in the car again but were attempting to get to the Black Hills ASAP. This is partially because at Old Faithful we stumbled across another car that was on a road trip and they had written on the windows their agenda. A lot of them were places we knew or were going but there was one place we hadn't heard of, Jewel Cave National Monument. When we looked it up it was on the way in to the area that we were staying so we were going to do it. There is a lot of warnings on the websites and even on the road that the tours of the cave book solid frequently. It's a Thursday afternoon though and we convince ourselves that that's probably a weekend kind of thing. We push through as much as possible and make it to the park before the last tour of the cave and think we are all set. We unload and head down to the ticket booth hoping to snag some tickets to head in only to be told that they were sold out. *D'oh* Back in to the car and off to Custer to get some dinner.
We head in to the city and start looking for a local place to eat and realize that the center turn lane for the main road is all blocked off and there are a ton of motorcycles. Quickly it strikes me, this must be the Sturgis Bike Week. A quick stop at the Chamber of Commerce/Visitor Center confirms this. Great, there are going to be throngs of people around on bikes. The only local places that looked decent were pretty packed with the bikers so we headed back out to the edge of town to a Pizza Hut. At least it wasn't busy and wasn't a burger.
Dinner behind us we go back through the city and stop at a local sweet shop that is highly rated and actually devoid of bikers for some reason. They are famous for their pies so how could I pass it up? I get peanut butter pie and it's pretty darn good. Everyone else opts for ice cream which was pretty good too. We grabbed some fudge and were off to the hotel for the night.
Previous Day!