Pilgrimage to Sturgis

© Ken Bingenheimer / RumBum.com

It’s not too far a reach to say that Sturgis is like Mecca. Every one of the faithful ought to get there at least once in their life. And the guys in the OFMC are nothing if not faithful, so in 2006 we made our pilgrimage.

Sturgis, SD, you are surely aware, becomes the world center of motorcycling every August when this little town of 7,000 briefly acquires a population nearly equal to the rest of the entire state. Sturgis Bike Week got its start back in the 1930s when the Jackpine Gypsies decided to get a bunch of bikers together and do some racing. The races continues but only a small percentage of the riders pay them any attention. For the rest, it’s time to party.

With that kind of influx, it’s no surprise that you had better make your lodging reservations well in advance. The OFMC is not known for that kind of planning but Bill had a connection. He works with a fellow who is from Rapid City, Scott, and Scott knows the guy who is the manager of the Holiday Inn, and so we got rooms. Mind you, we were bunking four to a room for $500 per night per room, but we did have a place to sleep. We would only stay there two nights and then head on with our usual summer trip.

We headed north out of Denver, to Cheyenne, and on to the little town of Guernsey, WY, where we spent the night. The next day we pressed on toward the Black Hills and when we picked up U.S. 85 north of Lusk the bikes started getting thick. By the time we reached U.S. 18, which runs along the south end of the Black Hills, they were everywhere. There is a rest stop at this intersection and there must have been 300 bikes stopped there, and the flow of bikes north and east was non-stop. Every now and then you’d even see a car.

Settled in Rapid, Bill’s friend Scott, who had also come up for the rally, became our tour guide. Almost every road through the Black Hills was choked with an endless stream of motorcycles going in both directions. Our first full day in town, following Scott we rode some lesser-known roads that took us up to Keystone and Mount Rushmore and then led us through the one-lane tunnels and pigtail bridges of Iron Mountain Road and the Needles Highway. Most of these tunnels were built specifically so that when you come through them the faces of Mount Rushmore are visible perfectly centered in the cut. The pigtail bridges were the engineering answer to the question of how to get a road down such steep slopes. The road crosses each bridge and then circles back underneath itself.

Into the Madness

On our second day it was time to head for the epicenter: Sturgis. Sturgis Mayor Maury LaRue tells me a study has shown that the average biker coming to the rally spends “an obligatory 2 hours and 43 minutes” actually in Sturgis, and the rest of their time eating, drinking, sleeping, riding elsewhere.

Pull in off the highway, though, and you’d swear everyone picked the same 2 hours and 43 minutes. The streets are jammed with motorcycles of all kinds, there is a never-ending roar of thousands of machines, and Main Street is a mass of people and motorcycles beyond description. So we plunged into the crowd and did what everyone else was doing: ate, drank, looked at people and motorcycles, and bought stuff.

For guys, of course, it was of particular interest to see how all of the bars were staffed by women wearing the shortest of cut-offs and leather chaps. Within the city limits a certain level of propriety is maintained, but we heard stories of how the scene is much more wide open out at the places like the Buffalo Chip campground, where many at the rally spend their time.

After exceeding our obligatory time by several hours, we figured we had to make a stop at the Full Throttle. Billing itself as the largest biker bar in the world, this “bar” is in fact a small town, complete with numerous restaurants and bars, cabins for rent, shops, and much, much more.

We straggled back to our rooms in Rapid that night in singles and in pairs, loaded with schwag and depleted of cash, and satisfied that we had faithfully answered the call. Next day we headed west.