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.

Legendary Rides - Decker Canyon Road

It's been a while since anyone posted here :) I thought it was time.

Everyone is telling me that they read this blog all the time. Me too. It brings back tons of memories. I find that each time I re-read it, I remember something else special.

Over the past month or so, my own memories have been running along the lines of the really great rides we had on this trip. I've got a list of six or seven that really stand out. For a biker, this has to be the best part of any trip. Yes, the beer was cold, yes, the Grand Canyon was awesome, but I'm going to pull "biker's rights" here and say that the road was the best part.

The right road always seemed to come along at the right time. Like Hwy 44 in South Dakota. Miles and miles of straight road over rolling hills. No cars anywhere... a great way to ease into the vacation mindset. And Route 23 over the San Bernadino hills in California. An amazing canyon run that we discovered quite by accident after passing through L.A. and looking for the first road from the Interstate to the Pacific Coast Hwy.

So here's my first pick. These will come in no specific order so don't read anything into the fact that this is the first one posted.

Route 23 is a two-lane canyon road. Actually it's more like a hilltop road when you look at it on Google Earth. It runs from Westlake Village (near Thousand Oaks, CA, just northwest of L.A.) over the hills about 10 miles to the Pacific Coast.

When we got off the interstate and went through Westlake Village, the road was just like any other. But then it started up, and started to turn. You know what it's like on a Rollercoaster when it starts up? The feeling of gravity pulling you back? Then that turn at the top before it starts to plunge? Kinda like that.

And it was a roller coaster. Top speed for us on this road was around 50kph (30mph). It rolled and twisted up and around with increasing frequency, turns getting tighter and tighter. Seemed like at every peak there was something to see, like the valley or some big estate, but you drivers know what I mean when I say we just didn't take our eyes off the road.

This wasn't an especially tough road to ride, except you felt like you needed to do 50kph and that was enough given that we had fully loaded touring/cruiser bikes with wifies on the back. Like tight "parking lot" turns, going either up or down on 10% grades, with narrow lanes and the occasional (suprise!) car or speeding bike coming the other way, and you don't know the road. This one made my heart pound.

This is the curve where Aldo took his (minor) spill. It was one particularly tight left hand curve on a downward slope with gravel on the outside. (This pic is looking back uphill.) Just a little too wide (even at low speed) and he was sliding into the guardrail. We noticed he had fallen back, so we stopped. A couple of guys in a sports car came by and said "Your friends want you to go back". Ooops.

Pulled him out, set it all back up, and rode the rest of the way out of the canyon (about 2 miles) really slowly. Just a little further along there was another accident, this one was bad enough for a towtruck. Some guy with a group of Harleys had done pretty much the same thing as Aldo, except there was no guardrail on his curve. :(

It was an amazing ride. One of those where you'd like to turn around and ride it back. Except by this time we were tired and thirsty. We found out afterward that this is a popular road with local bikers and many of them end up on a tow truck or in the hospital, or both. And we found it quite by accident (hah hah).



For a Google Earth video of the ride, you can either RIGHT CLICK HERE and download it to your computer (120Mb), or LEFT CLICK HERE and wait for it to start. Be patient, it's big. I'd download it if I were you, you're gonna wanna watch it again. :)

Enjoy the ride. We did.

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.