Day 7 - Spearfish, SD to...Scottsbluff, NE

Ok, I apologize for taking a few days off, but I've been busy visiting and catching up with Peggy and Bill, whom I haven't seen in several years. Peggy is my mom's best friend from childhood on and she and Bill are two of the nicest, sweetest people you'd ever want to meet. But I promise, today's story was worth waiting for!

Dad, Ellen, and I got on the road at 8am this morning, after saying our goodbyes with Peggy - Bill left early in the morning to go fishing before it got too hot. It was a beautiful morning, much cooler than the previous few days. We began by riding through Spearfish Canyon, a lovely, winding, tree-lined route through the Black Hills National Forest, past Bridal Veil Falls to Cheyenne Crossing. From there we rode towards Lead (pronounced Leed, not Led), Central City, and Deadwood, stopping at the Homestake Open Cut Gold Mine to have a peek at the huge mining hole in the ground. We then turned toward Keystone, home of Mount Rushmore. We didn't have time to check out the visitor's center, so we just took pictures from the highway, but we did get some good ones. From there we took Iron Mountain Road to/through Custer State Park, with some of the sharpest bends and u-turns I've had the nerve to ride on! You know the Jiffy Lube logo, the arrow that loops back on itself? Like that! Plus single lane bridges and tunnels. It was thrilling, to say the least! As we came up a hill in Custer, we stumbled upon the beggin' burros of the State Park - a herd of partially domesticated donkeys that are no strangers to people. They will walk right up to you to see if you have food for them! Not long after that, we saw our first herd of bison lining both sides of the road, with some even standing right in the middle of it blocking traffic! There were plenty of bison calves to see too, along with the much larger adults, who were shedding their heavy coats in the early summer heat. We also saw a few white-tailed deer and a dozen or more pronghorn antelope. After leaving Custer, we rode through Wind Cave National Park (no stops, though) to Hot Springs, SD and a quick lunch stop. At that point, it was already 1pm and we still had another 5-6 hours of traveling to do.

This is where the trip really starts to get interesting, and all because of the weather in Nebraska. From Hot Springs, we had planned to head for Crawford, Nebraska, but as we got into the Cornhusker State, we could see that there was a thunderstorm over Crawford, so we changed our route and went towards Chadron instead. We seemed to skirt the storm at Chadron and again at Alliance, and it appeared that we were going to pass directly between two storms on route 26 to Scottsbluff. On the left there were dark clouds and on the right were dark clouds, but in the center over the road, everything looked much lighter and free of rain. But as we got closer, it looked like there was smoke or fog close to the ground. It was about that time that I got hit by my first gust of wind, and shortly thereafter we found ourselves in the midst of a "Grapes of Wrath" style dust storm - a complete whiteout and grit-fest so bad that cars were even pulling over. We stopped on the shoulder with flashers on to try to wait it out, but it took a good half-hour before it seemed to get any better. Round then, two young guys on sport bikes stopped to see if we needed any help and said that the storm was headed our way, right down the road, so we figured it would be better to head into it and seek some shelter rather than wait any longer. As we left the shoulder, the dust seemed to settle back down and just a few miles later we found ourselves in Minatare, Nebraska, basically a one street town. The only place that was open was the Prairie Sky Foods store, a small grocery store with tables and chairs inside, so we made ourselves at home for a while. All of the locals asked where we were coming from and where we were headed, all the time thinking we were crazy for being out on motorcycles in the storm, even though that was not our intention. But they were very nice and accomodating and even let us use the non-public restroom in the back of the store.

The rain finally started to slow around 5:45pm and we figured we couldn't make it all the way back to Loveland before dark so we are now camped out at the Super 8 in Scottsbluff, resting up for the sprint to Colorado in the morning. We'll pick Margo up at the Denver airport in the early afternoon and relax at home for the rest of the day.