Our campground did not have showers so we took our first truck stop shower in Sundance. I didn´t know this before but it seems some truck stops have showers. You pay around $5 and they hand you the key to a bathroom with towels, and if they see there are two of you they´ll even offer extra towels at no extra charge. Really great if its been hot out and your campsite doesn´t have showers.
Shortly after Sundance we crossed into South Dakota.
Our South Dakota map had a curious little mark saying ¨geographical center of the US¨. We couldn´t resist, so we headed in that direction and found a tourist center in the nearest town. A nice old lady there gave us directions to the middle of nowhere which included ¨the old highway¨, ¨you´ll come to a barn¨, and ¨you might have to walk across some prairie¨. That was the first time I´ve ever dealt with directions like that before! As you can see, we found the old highway, barn, and crossed the prairie and made some stupid poses at the center of the USA.
Our directions failed to mention barbed wire, but we got through just fine.
Ross Delzer owns the center of the US. No trespassing. Someone should notify the tourist board of South Dakota I guess.
Next we happened across Sturgis. Sturgis is a motorcycle Mecca, a town where all bikers congregate in the second weekend in August to race and party for a week. Last year it was 300 000 bikes and it keeps getting bigger every year...
I didn´t even know it was in South Dakota, but since we were there we went to the motorcycle museum and saw a bunch of cool bikes.
Tank´s bike rocks! Pandemonium would be a pretty strange ride, though.
Part of the reason we were right in this area was that aside from being on our way to Madison, Wisconsin, it was also right where Mount Rushmore is. After a refreshing pizza in Rapid City (do you know what New England style pizza is like? right answer is: really thick crust, lots of toppings under a nice thick layer of cheese), we drove to the Black Hills (named after the dark color of pine forests). We made it to Mount Rushmore just as it was time for evening lighting ceremony.
We tried taking the typical tourist shots of ¨I was there¨ with the Mount Rushmore behind us but it was too dark. The pictures of the flags are of the Avenue of Flags where the flags of all the states are displayed. After looking at the lights for awhile we drove further into the Black Hills to find a campground. We ended up staying in the National Forest campground called Dutchman.
