Legendary Rides - Lead to Rochford, South Dakota

I should probably start this post by saying that these rides are not appearing in any order, chronological or other.




This ride was from Lead, South Dakota, to Rochford, South Dakota. Dave and I had toured around Sturgis the day before, and Deadwood today. Deadwood was very cool... we saw where Wild Bill Hickock was shot, and where he was buried. We found out that the town is 10 feet higher than it was in the olden days because the street was raised when it was rebuilt after a great fire. And we found out that Calamity Jane was a stalker.

After all that, and a couple of beers, we left town, passed through Lead, and headed south with the intention of seeing Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, and a bunch of other stuff.

This ride was amazing not because it had stunning scenery, which it didn't, or fast twisties, which it didn't, but because it was a nice, smooth road with long sweeping curves which wound through low valleys in the Black Hills (of South Dakota).

As with all Legendary Rides, the timing was just right. We didn't really want the "much anticipated" part of the trip to be over, and this ride away from Deadwood didn't disappoint us.

It was a beautiful sunny day; temperature was just right and there was no wind. We just swept back and forth in the tree-lined valleys, sometimes coming overtop of low hills, and sometimes breaking out into open meadows (does that sound gay?)

After about 45 minutes we stopped. Not because we were tired or anything, it was one of those stops you make because you don't want the road to end. It was at a little junction called Rochford.

We pulled over and parked the bikes beside a little hole in the wall called the "Moonshine Gulch Saloon". I highly recommend going there if you are anywhere in the neighbourhood. It was an old wooden building, with a front porch. Inside were maybe five or six tables with orange vinyl chairs and a short bar with three old guys playing checkers and teasing a boy who was watching. In the back was a cook labouring over the stove (a wood stove - no kidding) cooking up burgers, fries, and club sandwiches for the 15 or so patrons in the place.

In the main part were hundreds of ball caps nailed to the ceiling, and in the smaller second room were thousands of business cards stapled to the ceiling.

The mens room was... well I can't tell you because I told Dave to go see it and he didn't (for the second time I told him to see a mens room). That was the last time he didn't take my advice on that.

The beer was cold and wet, and we just sat there and stared around. Kinda wished I had taken a picture, but the place didn't really lend itself to that... really small inside and didn't figure the patrons would take kindly to it.

We did take a couple of pictures outside. Here's one of me. See the smokestack on the roof? That's from the pot-bellied stove in the front. I'd love to go back in winter, just to sit there and watch it.

Do you feel like you're in the Old Wild West? We did, for sure.

Here's Dave.


Here's a Google overhead shot of Rochford.


When we left, we went left (hah hah). After about half a kilometre or so the road turned to gravel (yuck), but we persevered, went slow and ended up on 315 north of Hill City. From there it was Custer, Crazy Horse, and then some...

Here's the link to the Google Earth video of the trip. As before, you are better off to right-click and save it to your computer. It's a biggie, 91Mb.

Till next time....

Hint: Click the CENTRE of the screen below, THEN click the play arrow. It will take a minute to buffer before it starts playing, so be patient.