Buffalo to Deadwood

Sunday, 8th August 2010

Nothing on the road apart from us!

8th of August is our actual anniversary, & when we came into the dining room for breakfast this morning, everyone cheered & applauded. Bob serenaded us with some old cockney song - don't give up your day-job, Bob - & we were handed a lovely card, which everyone had signed. Well, we were so overwhelmed, & I came over all emotional! Thank you everyone, for all your good wishes & kindness. What a great bunch you are! Eeeh, I'm filling up again just thinking about it!

And today's a big day in another way, too; today we hit Deadwood, where we get to stay in the same place for 4 consecutive nights, & enjoy the Sturgis Rally, & the reason for this tour. We've been seeing more & more Harleys on the road in the last few days, although you wouldn't think it from the picture above! We stop for lunch at the Buckhorn Saloon, along with a whole lot of other bikers, all heading for the same destination. Some people there like to show off a bit ...

Boss Hoss Trike - for sale at $90,000!

We passed some great placenames on today's ride; Crazy Woman Creek, Dead Horse Gulch, Sundance (where The Kid got his name from), & another, which was far more familiar!

 We called in at Deluxe H-D in Gillette for a bit of retail therapy, taking full advantage of the free coffee & help-yourself ice-cream machine. Well, it'd be rude not to, wouldn't it?  I know who came off best from our visit - collectively we boosted their sales enormously, so I s'pose a drop of coffee & a dollop of ice-cream is neither here nor there in the scale of things!

The roads began to curve gently & were filled with bikes as we swept down towards Deadwood, arriving at Cadillac Jack's, our hotel for the next four nights, around 3.30pm. Our people were like kids let loose in a candy store, barely taking the time to dump their bags in their rooms before rushing out to see as much as they could of this exciting area. The whole place was buzzing - or should that be roaring? - with thousands of bikes & bikers everywhere you looked. We agreed to meet at 8am next morning to go into Sturgis, & see what delights awaited us all there!