340 miles, 13 hours.

My campsite was situated so the morning sun would be filtered through some fairly high bushes. Still, I woke up early with the sun. I was on the road by 7am, and quickly covered 75 miles to Gillette, where I stopped for breakfast. I'd intentionally stopped there, since they had a FlyingJ, which meant I could gas up, eat breakfast, and have wifi service (which I really needed). I stayed there for over an hour.

My next stop was Devils Tower, 60 miles away. I stopped for photos a couple of times when I could see the tower in the distance. One stop was at a very wide point in the road with parking on both sides. My Hells Angels group from the day before was stopped there, still being followed by their chase truck. I again waved, and they (of course) didn't respond. Good times. I managed to snap a picture of their little group.

Next, I rode up to the tower itself and went hiking. There is a very nice trail that goes around the tower. I was happy to be hiking it in the morning when it wasn't too miserably hot out. I got to take lots of photos around the tower as well as seeing quite a bit of wildlife. It was also fun to see the climbers on the side of the tower.

On the way down, I stopped for more photos and also for the prairie dogs. For some reason I really like those little creatures. We've always used the term "prairie dog" for the act of peeking over a cubicle wall, which matches their behavior perfectly. They are certainly a fun little rodent (even if the ranchers disagree!).

I then rode on I-90 east to Spearfish, SD. From there I headed south on 14A, which is a very nice curvy highway. The problem is that Spearfish is only 18 miles from Sturgis, so it was fairly well infested with slow-riding bikers.

I don't have a problem with other riders- in fact, I have been making a special point to wave to everyone, no matter if they wave to me. But out of every 1000 riders I saw, only about 50 would be wearing any sort of helmet. Out of those 50, maybe 2 would be wearing a full-face helmet. Out of the 1000 riders, probably 20 were wearing a jacket and zero were wearing any sort of protective riding pants. It was clear I was the only one who believed in ATGATT.

Probably 80% of riding groups with more than 4 bikes in them were being followed by a chase truck, and it's probably safe to say that 50% of the bikes that were near Sturgis had been trailered there. The wimpiest "bikers" trailered all the way to Sturgis; the next category of "bikers" would trailer to a few hundred miles away from Sturgis, then ride while their chase truck followed.

I started to get a bad taste in my mouth for these "bikers" when I hit Hwy14A, since they would often travel at 35mph on a 50mph curvy highway. This wasn't because they were in large groups- even individual riders would be going very slowly. Combine that with the tourists going to Mount Rushmore and the road would be fairly clogged with people who weren't in a hurry to get anywhere.

I passed riders and cages as I could. Many of them hadn't even looked in their mirrors, which was the annoying part. Maybe 5% of the bikes would pull to the side so they didn't have to be officially passed. In any case, it was pretty annoying.

I rode through Lead and Deadwood, two fairly famous towns in the Black Hills. I paused to look at the Lead gold mine and learn more about it, and stopped in Deadwood for gas and photos. Otherwise, it was too crowded for me.

I took a series of highways on my way down to Wind Cave. One of them, Needles Highway, is fairly technical with sharp switchbacks and nice corners. It would be hard to take in a car, let alone with a trailer or in a motorhome. However, there's a one-lane tunnel at one point, and there was a motorhome in it. Stopped. I never did figure out if they had stopped to take pictures of their motorhome going through a motorhome-sized tunnel, or if they had scraped on the one side and wanted to see how bad it was.

Wind Cave itself was very interesting. The main layer of this area of South Dakota is limestone, so it formed mainly by water. The passages were small and narrow, with only a few rooms that could hold very many people. What was most interesting were the box formations. Over millions of years, the limestone would develop cracks, then those cracks were filled by calcite. Later, water would dissolve the slightly-softer limestone, leaving the shape of the cracks behind. The shapes were very interesting. These box formations are almost unique to Wind Cave; supposedly, it has over 98% of all known boxwork in the world.

The Wind Cave tour was over an hour. I stayed at the back of the pack so I could take plenty of pictures. Others were taking a few pictures, but it was pretty apparent they weren't reviewing the photos or didn't know how to make them turn out. Many of mine didn't turn out, either- but I was able to fiddle with the SLR and find the correct settings to make them work.

Near Wind Cave and the other parks (including Devils Tower) I saw plenty of animals. The bison were pretty interesting. I saw two herds of them- one was too close to comfortably take a picture while on a motorcycle, the other herd was too far away. There was a solitary bull, however, that was in a great spot. I watched him roll around in a dusty patch of prairie before wandering across the land. Unfortunately, he quit rolling around when I could get to my camera. Figures.

I also saw a couple small herds of pronghorn antelope. One was within rock-throwing distance, so I got some great photos.

After consulting with the rangers at Wind Cave, I stopped for the night in a campground just outside of Custer. The parks are expensive- $20-24 for a tent space- but even the nearby forest service campground is $15 (and that doesn't include showers, water, or wifi). That's why I took a $20 tent space near town.