Second Day -- Aberdeen, SD to Buffalo, WY

Getting from Aberdeen to the Black Hills involves going through some very sparsely settled landscape.  On my journey, it wasn’t unusual to go 30 or more miles between towns.  Even farms and ranches were spread out.  The roads were good though – they put Minnesota to shame.  I was able to keep up a steady 75-80 mph pace, with considerable sacrifice of gas mileage.

Sturgis was my first Black Hills stopping point.  Even with two months to go before the August rally, it’s clear that Sturgis lives, eats, and breathes cruiser bikes.  The town really doesn’t have a whole lot else going for it.  But to pander to the “biker culture” as unabashedly as Sturgis does is a bit obscene.  At this point in the year, most of the storefronts are being spruced up.  Some have signs indicating that they’re available for the upcoming festivities.  There are still a lot of bikers tooling through town, but more on the way to somewhere else than as a destination.  The souvenir shops (three t-shirts for $25) aren’t doing much business, even though the designs for this year’s tees have been created and printed.  It’s sort of like waiting for the curtain to rise for a summer stock play that you know will be just as mawkish as last year’s. 

I did stop in to see the Motorcycle History Museum.  It turns out that this is the leavings of the collection, the better part of which was sold to some place in Iowa.  Even though these were the second-string bikes, many of them were pretty interesting.  Lots of Harleys, of course, but more noteworthy were the large number of Indians, Excelsiors, Brit-bikes, and one-offs.  Only one BMW, a 1930s model, tucked away in a corner.  They even gave better show space to the one Moto-Guzzi in the collection!

After the museum, I decided to head west on the interstate to Buffalo, to be ready to do the route over the Big Horns and then through Yellowstone the following day.  I pulled into Buffalo around 8:30 p.m., thanks to gaining an hour going from Central to Mountain time.  Totally bushed, I grabbed a quick meal (very good beef stroganoff at a local steakhouse – the evening special), and then crashed.