Badlands and Iowa

After Piedmont, South Dakota I headed out to the Badlands. Now, the Badlands are beautiful. Highly recommend going out there for some camping. I mentioned previously there were no pictures of my time in the Badlands. The reason for this is it was getting hot. Very hot. Too hot to handle a 2 hour ride during the day. So I went to Mt. Rushmore during the day. Now money was getting pretty tight, so rather than go into the parking lot for the attraction I just rode around the area (it's nice), found a utility road I could leave my bike on, then scrambled up some boulders for a view.



I left Piedmont at around 10pm, well after the hottest part of the day. I got to the free campsite in the Badlands around midnight. I was hoping it would be mostly empty considering how hot it was, but such was not the case. Luckily there were some people still awake and making enough noise that I didn't feel bad about rolling in late, and being that I set up the tent once already I had it figured out got it all up in just a couple of minutes with minimal effort.

I awoke at 6 in the morning, because it was already too hot to sleep. I packed all my gear up as fast as I could. I had a liter of water with me, and I poured 1/2 of it out onto my shirt just before heading out to keep cool. I didn't know that it was already over 90 degrees, I just knew it was uncomfortably hot and that it was going to be a very long day.

I got out of the badlands as fast as I could, and while it was beautiful, and I got to see some mountain goats up close, it was so hot that even thinking about stopping for pictures made me nauseous.

I had 400 miles to ride and it was 107 degrees that day. I took it 60 miles at a time. The routine was ride 60 miles, pull over, gas up, drink some ice water, hose myself down in cold water. By keeping my clothes wet it keeps me much cooler as it evaporates while I ride. But by the time I got another 60 miles down the road, I would be mostly dry again. So it went and it was more or less bearable up until the last 100 miles from Spirit Lake, Iowa; when the humidity went way up which stopped the water from evaporating.

I started to focus like a laser on the road ahead of me instead of being aware of everything ahead of me, as well as my surroundings. "Just a few more turns and I'm there." In retrospect, I think I barely made it. If I had to ride for another 1/2 hour I would have had to pull over and lie down if I had the sense to. Otherwise I may have just passed out from heat stroke.

When I arrived at my hosts door feeling, looking, and smelling like a beaten wet dog, they asked me "You're leaving tomorrow for Missouri?" "Yeah that's the plan." to which they thankfully informed me "No you're not. You'll never make it in this heat. It's supposed to break by Wednesday evening. You can stay until Thursday." (It was Monday).

I felt like I had just been rescued (twice in one week!). Big thanks to Doug and Linda, I think you guys may have saved my life.

Now when I pictured Iowa, I pictured flat and boring. I did not picture



a beach side community complete with a boat accessible bar and palm trees.



Apparently they bring them in during the winter.

My hosts took me sailing



and they even set up a tour of the Victory Motorcycles plant through a friend of theirs.

Doug and I in the front room:



There were absolutely no pictures allowed inside the plant, but it was a very cool experience.

After the heat broke, I headed out that Thursday. As much as I wanted to head down to Missouri, I just couldn't. It was still over 100 degrees down there and there was no sign of the temperature dropping in the immediate future. So I altered my route and went to Madison, Wisconsin. I was 6 days from home.


Smell no evil.

The Legend of "Six-Shooter" Harris

To be read in the voice of Sam Elliott

Ain't ya heard the legend of Ian "Six-Shooter" Harris? Not named for the gun he carried, but for the bike he rode.



Harris blew in to Sturgis, South Dakota like some kind of thundering tumbleweed: hot, dry, and mean.

In another month, there was a rally happening here, but it wasn't getting any cooler and funds were tight. He wasn't there for that.

No, he had come to find his fortune in the Homestake gold mine in Lead. That plan...didn't work out. Not only due to his propensity to ride in carts of explosive material,



but all the gold had been completely mined out by 2001



and it is now used as a laboratory for researching neutrinos and dark matter.

After his failed stint at the mine, Six-Shooter, desperate and dejected, headed over to the (in)famous town of Deadwood, to try and win big in the casinos.

With his last 2 dollars burning a hole in his pocket, he parked his monstrous steed and walked in to the nearest casino. Mesmerized by the flashing lights, he sat down at a roulette table. Now watchin' that little ball bounce around that wheel can be quite stressful indeed.



But lady luck must've been blowing him kisses from across the room and before long he figured he had better high tail it out of there before he's dragged into a back room and worked over for winning too much.



So away he walked, at a brisk pace, on over to "The Original Location Saloon" to pay his respects to the mannequin of "Wild" Bill Hickok, which supposedly sits in precisely the spot where the man himself was shot.



Sometimes when a dude is in a place, he just needs to have a drink. Especially if it's hot out.



Not much a fan of beer, Six-Shooter got himself a root beer, and rode on out of Deadwood for the only place a man like him could call his home: The Badlands.

There ain't no pictures of his time in the Badlands. There could be several reasons: Some say his bike was so powerful, it tore a hole straight through to hell; and he rode down there, won the devil's crown in a poker match, and there he now rules. Still others say Odin himself came and traded his powers for Six-Shooter's jacket and Six-Shooter was able to then explore other worlds, while Odin got a pretty sweet jacket. They also say Odin got the better part of that deal.

But most say, and I'd like to believe this is true, he had some sort of epiphany out there; threw away all he had, left his bike in a ditch, and spent the rest of his days enjoying the beauty of the black hills. Now adds beautiful backgrounds to his pictures of turtles. They say if you're out in the Black Hills of South Dakota, after midnight when the sky is clear, you can still hear the six roaring cylinders of Six-Shooter's motorcycle.
















They're wrong though. He was in Spirit Lake, Iowa after a night in the badlands.