We were not due in Gillette, Wyoming until the next day, so we had another day to play tourist in Wyoming.  Today we did the area northwest of Rapid City, SD.  We drove from Black Hawk, SD to Sturgis, SD via I-90, where we walked up and down the main street of Sturgis, which was very empty on a Sunday morning.  The place appeared to be mostly bars and T-shirt shops with architecture that was not that quaint or interesting.  We met a shopkeeper who was straightening up the T-shirts on sidewalk tables outside her shop.  She said that the three main businesses in Sturgis are bars, clothing shops, and banks.  We talked with her a bit about the famous motorcycle rally, which takes place in early August every year.  We speculated that it must be quite a place to be with 20,000 to 30,000 motorcycles.  She vey politely corrected our naïve misunderstanding, and told us to for the week the Sturgis rally is going on, and a bit before and after, there are 400,000 to 600,000 motorcycles in the 100 mile radius surrounding Sturgis!  She also offered that many of those motorcycles never even come to Sturgis itself; that groups come year after year, stay at favorite campgrounds, and never leave except perhaps to ride around the countryside.

The Geographic Center of the U. S.

We then drove from Sturgis to Belle Fourche, SD (pronounced “Bell Foosh”) to see the Monument for the Geographic Center of the (50) United States of America.  The center shifted here (actually a point 20 miles north of town in a privately owned field) from a point in Kansas after Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union.  We met an excellent volunteer at the visitor center who tipped us off to the Aladdin, WY General Store, 17 miles to the west.  That wasn’t on our itinerary for the day, but we might visit it as part of our Devil’s Tower sightseeing day.  He also asked us where we were headed this summer and when we mentioned that we would be headed for home by way of I-94 through Montana and North Dakota, he asked if we already had reservations at RV parks and campgrounds?  We told him that we did not, and he suggested that we make them.  There is apparently a major oil boom going on in eastern Montana and western North Dakota, and the workers have taken up residence in every RV park, campground, and motel in the area.  We thanked him for sharing that information, and find that folks along our way are often very helpful.

D. C. Booth Historic Fish Hatchery under water viewing window

From Belle Fourche we traveled south to Spearfish, SD.  Expecting only to pass through to get to a scenic drive through the Black Hills, we stopped to see the D. C. Booth historic fish hatchery and ended up staying quite a while.  The hatchery is a wonderful site adjacent to a lovely city park and across the street from a city owned RV campground.  Here again, we met a volunteer at the museum who was a full-time RVer.  He and his wife were both volunteers at the hatchery and were staying in the RV park across the street.  He had lots of information to share about our intended destinations in Wyoming, and did so quite freely.

We decide to scout out lunch before continuing our trek and found the Green Bean Coffeehouse, and organic café with vegetarian and vegan choices.  We had the Woodstock wrap consisting of hummus, cashews, and veggies, and it was excellent.

We left Spearfish and drove US-14A through Spearfish Canyon, and the towns of Lead, and Deadhorse before returning to I-90 E to Exit 52 (Black Hawk) and 3 Flags RV Park.  Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are two of the more famous people buried here, but we did not stop as it was getting late in the day and we were getting tired.  Deadhorse definitely had the look of the old west, but it was hard to tell how much of it was authentic/restored and how much was re-created.  It was also mobbed and it looked like finding a place to park might be difficult, with quite a walk back to the main part of town.  Maybe some other time.

BTW:  Linda has done all of the sight-seeing driving in the Honda Element, which gives me a chance to study maps and look at scenery that I don’t get when driving the coach.  When driving on/near I-90, as well as when we are at our coach (watching the traffic on I-90), we have observed a steadily increasing flow of west-bound motorhomes, many presumably headed to Gillette, WY for the upcoming FMCA Family Reunion and Motorhome Showcase (rally/convention).  We will be headed that way ourselves tomorrow so we cleaned the outside of all the windows on the coach.  We are due to arrive at the CAM-PLEX in Gillette on 6-17-13 in the PM.  We figured it would be 2.5 hour drive and discussed hooking up the car before bed this evening so we could just disconnect the utilities and leave.  We decided against it for emergency/safety reasons.  (Should we need to leave in a hurry for some reason, the delay involved in unhooking the car could make the difference between a good and bad outcome.)  We planned to pull out at approximately 9:30 AM, which gave us plenty of time to make ready for travel in the morning.