Sturgis!

Well, today was to be the last day of “Sturgis Week”, so yesterday, Snookie, Bob, DeWayne and I all piled into their truck and off we went to join the masses and take in the excitement of Sturgis.  It’s no more than about 50 miles down the interstate, so we made good time getting there.  But I was not at all prepared for what all we saw when we got there.  Wow!

We found a place to park about two blocks from the downtown area and walked down the hill and around the corner to see this…

Do you see the platform to the left?  For a $5 donation, Snookie and I were able to go up and get a good picture of the length of the street.

Snookie and I decided that we’d like to have a dollar for every motorcycle that had passed thru this town in the past two weeks.  Can you imagine? 

Our first stop was to “One Eyed Jack’s Salloon” where we ordered Angus burgers and pulled pork sandwiches and three of us had a beer while Snookie stuck to her Pepsi.  But the photo opportunities didn’t wait til we had satisfied our hunger.  No sireeee!  Here is one of the bartenders.

Our bellies full, we ventured back out on the street and one of the first sights we saw was this…..

Now, we all thought that was the guys real butt, but I ran into him in one of the t-shirt shops and (after closer inspection, lol) realized that it wasn’t.  It sure got our attention, though. 

Now, we saw all kinds of people in Sturgis and I’ll save those for later.  We made our way all the way down the street and back up on the other side of the street, taking pictures of bikes and people, but we had more fun “people watching” than anything else.

I’ll see if I can organize all the bikes that caught my eye.  First of all, my favorite bike was one that we saw on our last leg of the tour, as far as pretty bikes go.  I loved this one!  Be sure to click on the individual pictures if you want to see them more close-up.

We saw this one at a pay parking lot and the guy in the shed told us that he had bought it off ebay and hadn’t changed a thing.

Ya know what?  I’m just gonna post the pictures and leave out the commentary.  Just too many to choose from to get them all organized in my mind, feeble as it is. 

So, here ya go!  The bikes!

There were seats and seat covers….

Trailers…..

What you might call accessories?…..

Beautiful detail work…..

And even the occasional canine enthusiast…

DeWayne was fascinated with the “homemade” variety of motorcycle, complete with beer keg for the gas tank, in the next four pictures…

Now, as far as PEOPLE go, we saw all ages, shapes, sizes, and varieties.  Here is a sample of what we saw on the street…

I wasn’t able to get very good pictures of this guy, but I would say he was the most interesting of the lot…bike and all…

Now, what would you call him?  An Indian/rebel deer hunter? 

By this time, our feet hurt, we were hot, tired and thirsty.  So we made another stop into the saloon for something to drink.  It was crowded, so DeWayne and Bob were leading the pack as we wound our way around the bar to find a table, and they walked right by the sight in the picture without even noticing, but Snookie caught my arm and said, “Look at this”! 

Yep folks, those are real.  They were only too happy to let us take their picture.  And this is the bartender where we were…

Oh, and let’s not forget the vendors!  There were shops after shops selling trinkets, t-shirts, saddlebags, and probably a thousand other things.  I thought these were interesting.

By four o’clock, we were all ready to head back to the truck and get back on the road.  We made it home about an hour later and everybody made a path to their own RV’s.  Later that evening, I ventured out to sit at the picnic table, and Snookie walked up at the same time, so we visited for a few minutes.  She said, “Are you guys tired”?  And I responded with “Yes!  We’re really tired”.  She said they were completely worn out from the day also, so I guess we wore ourselves out trying to see everything there was to see at Sturgis.  There was so much going on all around us that I think we were all on visual overload.  But we were all glad we experienced Sturgis at least once.  It was more interesting than any of us thought it would be.

So, if you ever have the chance to see Sturgis Week, go for it.  At least once.  It’s definitely not boring. 

Now, this is the third blog post that I’ve done today and it has taken most of the day, so I’m all blogged out and ready to get this one edited and posted.  I’ve had trouble posting to the blog all day due to the internet instability, so I may have to wait until tomorrow to get this one published, but I’ll be glad to get all done finally and that I’m caught up for a day or two.  Whew!

It’s bedtime here on the trail, folks.  So goodnight and…..

HAPPY TRAILS!