And the Bomb Squad is in the Building

Well, it certainly ended up being an eventful day today. But I’ll start at the beginning of the day and keep you guessing for a bit.

Dave and Karen’s daughter flew in today, arriving at noon. She’s just completed her Army basic training, MP training and Airborne school. So she was able to get some leave to visit with her parents before she goes back to be trained in the canine unit. She’s quite a young lady, to say the least. Visiting with her reinstills my faith in the young people of this country.

Anyway, Dave and Karen took off for the airport to meet their daughter and we rode down to Rapid City (30 miles) to go to the convention center, which is the H.O.G. headquarters during the rally. That’s Harley Owner’s Group, people – not a bunch of pigs. So we looked at all the new 2008 bikes that are coming out, all the new accessories that are being offered and of course all the new Harley Ford trucks available – and of course, that’s where I found Ole – drooling so badly he needed a bib. But then he decided it wouldn’t be good to put the doggers into a truck that had beautiful leather upholstery and thickly carpeted floor. That just wouldn’t be right – so he decided to keep what he’s got. (Whew!!)

Then we rode through Rapid City, up Nemo Road, Vanoker Canyon and back to Sturgis. There were some rather ominous clouds moving in which eventually moved to the south of us, so we managed to stay dry once again. Riding in the rain, even just drizzle is very miserable – it actually hurts when it hits your face, plus it’s just not fun to get so wet. In years past we’ve been so wet we’ve actually poured water out of our boots that measure into the cups, not just little drips. You get wet in places you didn’t even know you had!!

This evening we rode into downtown Sturgis to see what the action was. After doing a little shopping I came back to the bike where Ole was sitting taking in all the sights. I noticed that the area I had just come from now had large vehicles with flashing lights. Ole decided to walk down that way to see what was going on and when he came back told me that Mr. Al’s, one of the shops, had been evacuated and was totally cordoned off, and the street was being totally cleared out. We assumed there had been some kind of altercation – gunfight, stabbing, something that wasn’t supposed to happen. Shortly Dave showed up (remember he’s a retired CHP). They had also been in the same area shopping. He visited with one of the local police officers and found out that a “mysterious package” had been found in the building, full of wires and electronics. The bomb squad had been called and the entire downtown area was to be evacuated. So we hightailed it out of the area before we got caught in a traffic jam of bikes. We rushed back to the RV and turned on the local news, but of course there was not even a mention of the incident. I suppose we’ll hear something by tomorrow morning.

For those of you who have been to Sturgis – our favorite local hangout no longer exists. The Nite Owl is no more. It was sold to the Knuckle for the liquor license and has been gutted – all the restaurant and bar facilities have been removed and now they sell T-shirts! What a loss. There is no longer anyplace on Main Street to get food other than street vendors. And I refuse to stand on the sidewalk to eat my lunch.

Well, Folks, that’s the report for today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Sorry I’m not posting a lot of pictures, but without high speed Internet it gets tedious. My new cell phone does a reasonable job, much faster than my old one, but yet not even close to WiFi. So you’ll just have to wait until I get home to take a ride down Main Street on the back of the bike via video. Sorry.

We're in Sturgis

Well, Folks, we arrived in Sturgis on Wednesday afternoon and met up with our friends, Karen and Dave from Arizona. We met them 8 years ago in the parking lot of a hotel we were staying in and have been good friends ever since. When we go south in the winter we always make an effort to park in their driveway for a few days for their free camping services (snicker).

Dave and Karen are some very interesting folks. They raised eleven children, two of whom were their biological children, and five of the remaining adopted nine children were from other ethnic backgrounds. Only one of the eleven children was male, so Dave has some interesting stories to tell about living in a household with eleven females who were all suffering from PMS at the same time!!

So we spent the afternoon catching up and then drove the eleven miles up the canyon to Deadwood and Lead to find some supper. Then it was on to a few casinos in Deadwood where Karen came out about $30 ahead, then on down the road back to the campground and an early tuck-in-to-bed.

This was all fine and dandy and quiet until about 2 a.m. when loud motorcycles pipes, sirens and flashing lights woke me up. So being the Nosey Norwegian that I am I of course had to get up and see what was going on. No surprise that Ole slept through the entire racket and I had to fill him in on the details the next morning. Senior Citizen Simon kept me company while I watched out the window. Seems some idiot stayed in one of the bars too long and then hopped on his bike and went speeding down the highway toward the campground. Now believe me, there is an abundance of cops in this area right now, and anybody who chooses to break any of the traffic laws deserves what they get. This idiot apparently thought he was going to outrace the cops here, who are also on motorcycles, headed into the campground thinking he was going to hide amongst the motor homes and tents but was unsuccessful – he crashed into a tree and stopped fast. Three motorcycle cops followed him with a police SUV right behind them, got him stopped just down the road from us, sirens going and flashing lights flashing. He must have gotten off his bike and tried to run as I could see all kinds of search lights flashing through the trees that surround the campground. Apparently he got hung up on a barbed wire fence and the police closed in on him. Then a wrecker appeared, loaded up his bike and I would imagine he’s probably still sitting in the clink and his bike is locked up somewhere. Being put in jail in Sturgis during Bike Week is almost as bad as being put in a Mexican jail – if you know what I mean!!

This morning we woke up to rain showers so nobody was in a hurry to get going. Ole and I finally decided we’d try to do a little shopping before the crowds get bad and everything gets picked over. Also, we needed to have some repairs made on our T-bag as the zipper broke which of course causes things to fall out. After visiting three different places we finally found someone who was able to fix it.

One of the very noticeable things about the bike rally this year is that the counts are already way down. Folks who normally move out of their homes and rent them to groups of bikers have not been able to rent. There are signs all over town that there are homes available for rent, campgrounds and motels are not full and there are lots of vendor spaces available. I believe two things have happened here: gas prices have put people off and Sturgis has priced itself out of the market. In the past, hotel rooms that normally rent for $50 a night would go for $250 a night during bike week. Food and beverages prices were always raised at least 20 percent, along with gas prices. The latest gas price that I saw in Sturgis this afternoon was regular for $3.69 per gallon. Diesel was $3.59, so I’m glad we filled in Buffalo at $2.95 and won’t need to buy anymore before we get home. Now is that gouging or what? I think people are getting tired of being taken advantage of, thus the picture I have attached of the no inflated prices sign. The saloon that had that sign posted was so full there wasn’t even standing room. Also, the crowd attending the bike rally is getting more and more gray, if you know what I mean. The teens, 20s and 30s can’t afford it anymore and it’s the 40s, 50s, 60s and older that you see on the streets, and being older and wiser they’re just not going to stand for all the gouging.

We’re seeing lots of familiar faces in the campground as many of us have been camping here since the place opened five years ago. There’s the electrician from Kansas City who travels with his dog Norton and a wife who drinks way too much wine every night, turns on her CD player and dances all in her own little world. The RV on one side of us has five guys from Pennsylvania, who plan to get on their bikes early tomorrow morning and ride to Cody, Wyoming, about 200 miles from here. There is so much beautiful riding here in the Black Hills I don’t know why they think they have to go all the way to Cody, which is all grassy plains other than the Big Horns. Across the road from us are Jeff and his Dad from Huron, SD. Jeff is a wonderful young man who works as a counselor for wayward boys, but is leaving that job to go back to farming with his father. Then two doors down from us is a couple from Payson, AZ, and the wife just happens to have graduated from the same high school that Ole and I did, only two years ahead of us. We didn’t know her, but we knew her sister quite well. It’s a small world, isn’t it? There are lots of other familiar faces here that we haven’t had a chance to catch up with yet, but we’ve been coming here so many years it almost gets to be like a family reunion.

Ole has been coming here every year since 1988. I haven’t missed a year since 1994. That’s a lot of years, People. And even though we ride the same routes every year and do basically the same things, we don’t get tired of it. It’s always beautiful and very enjoyable.

By the way, I want you all to be very proud of me. I was having trouble getting my cell phone to connect to the internet – but I managed to get that all figured out and as you can tell (duh) it’s working now!! So I just want to feel all those proud vibes way down here coming from all of you. Just remember, I’m not the brightest light bulb in the box when it comes to computer hardware so this is a major accomplishment for me.

Home, Home on the Range . . . .

Home, Home on the Range, where the deer and the antelope play - - - -

We saw more antelope and deer today than I think either of us has seen in our entire lifetime. We're in Buffalo, Wyoming and took a ride south about 50 miles to Kaycee, home of Chris LeDoux and old stomping grounds for Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and the Hole in the Wall Gang. The actual Hole in the Wall is located not very far from Kaycee, but requires a 4-wheel drive to get there and is situated on a privately owned ranch. So we didn't go.

So instead we had lunch at the Invasion Saloon in Kaycee and went across the street to visit the museum. For a town of only 249 people, it had a great museum with all kinds of interesting things displayed from the area and quite a history of the Hole in the Wall Gang.

I was very disappointed in part of our day though. Last night we had supper at a saloon where the locals hang out and met some really interesting folks. One of them was a lady named Teri who stopped by for a burger and a beer on her way home. She had been in town with her 15 year old daughter's horse to get it ready for an upcoming show. She was driving a 1-ton flatbed pickup with a very long 5th wheel behind with one horse in. After visiting with her a bit she invited me out to meet the horse, took it out of the trailer and the horse came over and started rubbing on me like a cat would rub on your legs. Guess she wanted her ears scratched and her nose rubbed or something.

Teri is married to a guy who owns and operates a 24,000 acre ranch which backs up into the Big Horn Mountains. She breeds, raises and trains quarter horses, and if they are anything like the one she had with her last night, they must be beauties. Sorry I didn't get a picture but by this time it was dark. Anyway, the long and short of it was that she invited Ole and I out to her ranch this morning to see the rest of her horses. She gave me her phone numbers and I was to call her this morning, which I did. But she never returned the call, so either she was busy or changed her mind about inviting strangers out to her house. I can't fault her for that, but I was disappointed.

So then it was back to the rig to do a bit of KP duty. The dust and dirt have kind of accumulated in here over the last two weeks. Then I did laundry and Ole cleaned the motorcycle. Tomorrow we'll take the rig and trailer over to the car wash and clean all the dirt off the outside. It will probably cost us a fortune in quarters, but it's so dirty on the outside you hate to even touch it to get into the compartments in the basement. Oh, well, it's ONLY money (snicker)!!

I'm posting some pictures, one is just a view of the highway, but note that the color of the pavement is red. It's made out of the local rock/dirt which is red and I believe is called scoria. Then there's one of a Bud Light and a can of Copenhagen. Found this sitting on the table outside the Invasion Bar in Kaycee - typical cowboy paraphernalia. Otherwise, just some scenery along the way.

This MAY be the last post I can do unless I can get my cell phone figured out and connect through that. I know that the campground we'll be staying in at Sturgis does not have WiFi, so I'll be CUT OFF and have to suffer withdrawals. AAAACCCKKK!!!

Anyway, enjoy the pictures, and if I don't communicate sooner, we'll be home in a couple of weeks.

Love Lena

You're going to get tired of this!!

Okay - before you get through this entry you're probably all going to be tired of looking at pictures of mountains. But they're so beautiful to us Flatlanders I just can't explain it.

We didn't do anything yesterday as Ole woke up feeling kind of under the weather - just all washed out if you know what I mean. The altitude adjustment always bothers him and since we're camped at 8,000 feet, it was somewhat of an adjustment. A man Ole's size needs lots of oxygen, and it was just a bit on the short side here. So we layed low, but then there's nothing wrong with a day of rest because when we hit Sturgis and the bike rally we'll be going hard and long every day.

So anyway, today dawned bright and beautiful and we took off through the Tetons to make a day of it. Just down the road from where we're camped we saw an eagle's nest with little baby eagles sticking their heads over the edge waiting for mom and dad to come back with something good to eat.

Then it was on down the road for more scenery.

Then, somewhere along the line as we were gawking and pontificating, we ran into some young people from Seattle who just happened to be traveling with a German Shepherd. So of course Ole had to go introduce himself and get his Dog Fix. He's missing those grand doggers a lot. And from what we hear from Lovely Daughter, they aren't behaving very well, either one of them. I think they're mad because Ole left them. This dog's name was Sequoia, a three year old that was terribly thin. She almost looked emaciated.

Okay - here's more mountains and blue sky - I told you you'd get tired of them.

After going through the park we drove down to Jackson. Yes, that's right, Jackson, not Jackson Hole. Jackson is the name of the town, Jackson Hole is the name of the valley that Jackson is in. It's a small town of only about 8,000 people, but very quaint and strictly tourist oriented. Here's the main street of Jackson.

And would you believe we found ANOTHER Cowboy Bar? This one was huge and is apparently the main location for any action you want in the town. The bar stools are actual saddles that you have to sit on. We tried them but decided they felt too much like sitting on the motorcycle seat and we needed a break from that.

We rode around the town square, where there were arches on all four corners of the square made of elk antlers. That's a lot of elk antlers. And each year the antlers are auctioned off, to whom I don't remember at this point, but they're sold as a fund raiser for the Boy Scouts and the elk refuge that's located on the edge of town. Then the Boy Scouts go out and collect more and build more arches. Pretty unique.

The town of Jackson was very crowded so we decided to go a bit farther and headed up to the Teton Pass (8000+ feet). Most of the grade up and down the other side was 10% for anywhere from 10 to 15 miles and full of switchbacks. We rode over to Victoria, Idaho and then turned around. It was beautiful. This is a shot taken from the top of the pass looking down into Jackson Hole.

Tomorrow we take off for Buffalo, Wyoming to spend a couple of days and do some laundry before we hit Sturgis.

I can feel the envy way out here (snicker) - on the travel part - not on the laundry part. But then maybe I can talk Ole into doing that too - after all, he does 99% of the cooking when we travel!!

Y'all have a great day, okay?