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Saved: February 24th 2016
Welcome to Sturgis
Preparing for Bike Week. Signs are up, venders are arriving, and T shirts are everywhere.Sturgis, S.D.! The city known for the largest motorcycle rally in the world. This year is the 70th anniversary and the bikers will be coming in numbers. They expect to have between 300 to 500 thousand bikers for the rally. Cities for 100 miles around will be filled to capacity with bikers and their friends. When we left Custer, 75 miles away, they were gearing up for the event by sectioning off the middle of the downtown for places to park the bikers. Wall, S.D., about 90 miles away, was also planning on the population to double in the next week. The event of the year lasts for 10 days but the crowds will be here a week before and a week after to celebrate this 70th year. While I had always wanted to visit Sturgis and maybe experience bike week I think the crowds may be too much for me to handle. Here in the RV park where we are they will be parking bikers everywhere. They have room for 165 rigs/etc. but figure that will probably double or triple before things are over. It is a very nice park and bikers will appreciate what it has to offer. There
Cowboy sculpture
Sculptures are all over town and many are very good. is a guest house near the center of the area and they have built a large deck where there will be entertainment every night during the event. A band rents the house and pays a fee to play for the crowds. Vender fees are running 75 dollars a square foot and one car dealer in town has moved all his cars out of town so he can have venders rent the parking lots/etc. A week or so after the last of the bikers have left the town will recover for a year and allow things to get back to normal. Well somewhat normal ---- until the weather sours, tourists will frequent the place to see what all the fuss is about. We leave tomorrow and will miss most of the crowds. But we have walked the streets, bought a few things, and ventured into most of the stores/etc. If you go off the main drag about a block you will see old houses and what appears to be a quiet nondescript village. Right now the rumble of Harleys and others are heard everywhere -- some arriving early to be tourists and seeing the sights. Oh, we also noticed that “Hot
Leathers” seems to be the main vender in town. Having bought a few things in different places and coming back to the RV we were going over the sales slips when we noticed that every one of them had “Hot Leathers” on them. They seem to cover almost every square inch of the town.
Well, there is more to do than see Sturgis. We jumped in the car and took off for the Badlands and Wall the next day. It was about 90 miles to Wall as I said but when the speed limit is 75mph most of the way it didn’t take long to get there. Actually we went past Wall and on for several miles so we could get on the loop for the Badlands. They were impressive and rose out of nowhere. You would be riding along a level plain when suddenly to your side would be huge ravines and tall cliffs/mounds/etc. The Badlands reminded us of several other spots we have seen over the last few months; Bryce Canyon, Painted Desert, Big Bend, Scotts Bluff, and others. The colors may be different but the similarities were there --- but all were beautiful and fascinating to
Hot Leathers
This is the largest seller of things in all of Sturgis. No one can out do this company. see. Although the Badlands are arid today, an inland sea once covered this area. In time, the sea drained and a tropical rainforest developed. The Badlands then became home to species such as saber-tooth cats and elephant-sized mammals. Fossils of many species have been found in the Badlands. The area has one of the highest concentrations of fossils in the world, which I didn’t know previously. We were surprised by the colors in the rock and how vivid they were. One in particular caught our eye as it had yellows, pinks, reds. Beautiful!
Leaving the Badlands we stopped at the Prairie Homestead which was the home of Mr. & Mrs Ed Brown who homesteaded this 160 acres in 1909. It is one of the few original sod houses left in the country. Mr. Brown used cottonwood logs for his homestead home. The beams and front of the house are original. He plowed buffalo grass sod for the upper walls of his home. The home was warm in the winter and cool in the summer and walls would be laid in two rows with locking pieces which gave a depth of almost 24” to the walls. The living room area
Bitter End Saloon
You can have you photo taken here. (the right side of the building) was a deserted claim shack which he moved in and added to the dugout a few years later. He also had a cellar dug into the hillside where things were kept cool and fresh. There were a few other added buildings nearby and an interesting collection of white prairie dogs who have made the area their home. While they were smaller than the ones we worked with in Okla. they were still fun to watch and we were surprised at how tame they seemed to be compared to the ones we had in Okla. We were also surprised at how vocal they were, chattering back and forth for no known reason. A common remark by homesteaders was that the government bet you 160 acres of land against $18 dollars that you will starve to death before you live on the land 5 years. Proved them wrong didn’t they?
Now it was on to Wall Drug in Wall, S.D. Bill had visited Wall Drug back in the fifties and wanted Judy to see the most famous drug store in the world. The owner, Ted Hustead, bought the drug store in 1931 and struggled for
My favorite Sign
We see this one everywhere we go but have not seen a rattler as yet. Good!!! five years to bring in customers. His wife, Dorothy, suggested putting signs on the highway offering free ice water to weary travelers after not being able to nap because of all the traffic and noise. Together they made small signs and added short sayings similar to Burma Shave. The response was immediate and people came to fill up their jugs before continuing on their journey. Some people asked for more than the water and bought ice cream or some other drinks. By the end of the first day he and Dorothy were pooped. As the 2nd summer began he hired 8 girls to help him. He never looked back! He gave away free signs asking people to put them out on highways. Signs have been requested from people all over the world and even show up in Iraq and Iran. He gradually added different features to the drug store such as a Travelers Chapel, Cafeteria, and a Gift Shop. Today about 20,000 visit Wall Drug on a daily basis. It used to be that you could get free coffee but today you pay 5 cents for coffee. Interesting,Vets, Honeymooners, and some others can still get a free coffee and donut.
(Ya, Bill got his free coffee but declined the doughnut as he was being good to his weight.) Today when people stop they can request a free sign if they will post it somewhere just as previous people have. (Bill picked up two -- one for Fla. and one for Ohio - HA) I should say that today Wall is almost all commercial and a far cry from how it started out. Bill was somewhat disappointed to see that it now takes up at least one good sized city block and other businesses on the street are similar. Guess it was simply a matter of time! Currently, it is still being run by family members who have taken over since Ted and Dorothy’s death.
Still a little time left in the day so we set off for Rapid City, several miles west, to see a Stave Church. The Chapel in the Hills is an exact replica of famous 850 year old Borgund Stavkirke located near Laerdal, Norway. An extraordinary amount of craftsmanship is evident. The pieces that comprise the church were not only cut and put in place, they were carefully molded to their tasks. The building components seem
put together to achieve a holistic expression. All the various parts visually support and help each other. Looking at the front door carving you see carving of snakes and dragons, the battle of good and evil. The vikings were pagan and the dragon was good luck to the Vikings. (Dragons were often on the prow of their ships) The front door is also known as the “Mens Door”. In the early church, men stood on one side and the women and children stood at the “Woman’s Door” which was on the other side. The door portal on that door is pagan. The top of the portal has carved lions and the bottom has heads of bear or wolves. It is said that the door portal was possibly removed from an older, heathen church and placed on the original Borund Church, as this was a common practice in those times. The dragonheads on the chapel roof are a carryover from pagan beliefs. They were new Christians and were not ready to leave all of their past beliefs behind. (Guess they were hedging their bets.) The fact that the crosses outnumber the dragonheads shows their confidence in Christianity. Each cross on the
Badlands Photo 3
Level grassland with sudden massive mounds. chapel is different but no one seems to know why. We were interested in finding out that builders had a special way to choose timbers for the staves. When they selected a tree they didn’t cut it down but did remove all the branches and bark and left it standing for a year or two. The tree went thru a hardening process and became better suited for its purpose. There are 16,000 shingles on the roof, all cut by hand saw. The ceiling is constructed like a Viking ship turned upside down. The locks are exact replicas of the original locks. The ring on the front door was used as a knocker and known as a Sanctuary Ring. An interesting side story is that in early days outlaws could be killed by anyone - BUT - if they managed to get to the church and grip the Sanctuary Ring no one could touch them. It is told many outlaws starved to death, holding the ring. One last thing we learned was that the ridge rail on the top rear of the church has the symbols “IHSL” carved into it. This is ancient Greek for “Jesus, Savior of Man”. Next are
Badlands Photo 4
Interesting rock formation. the words “ANNO1738” and it is believed this is the year the ridge rails were added to the church. Wow, did we learn a lot from a little Chapel in the Hills.
It was built with the plans from & permission of the Norwegian Government. It was built as a home for the radio program, “Lutheran Vespers”. After a few years the American Lutheran Church combined with other Lutheran Churches and became the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. The radio program was removed from the Chapel in the Hills and the chapel was left without support. The Chapel in the Hills has no congregation, receives no funds from any local, state or national church or organization. The funds to operate the Chapel in the Hills come from donations, weddings, and sales in the gift shop. We found the church to be in beautiful condition and the grounds extremely well maintained. It was interesting to hear from a recording what the different features of the church represent. It was also interesting to learn that to the right of the altar there is a small window that was for lepers as they were not allowed
in the church but could still receive communion. There was also the “ambulatory,” a covered walkway attached to the church running all the way around the outside. When the weather was bad, parishioners could wait under that roof until the church opened. We learned they have vespers there each evening and it is often filled with visitors as well as those who attend regularly. It is set in a nice housing community and has lots of green grass and trees, along with a prayer path that goes through a woods behind the chapel.
This ended our day and we headed back to Sturgis for the evening. The last day was spent catching up on things around the RV, fixing a few things, blogging, and just relaxing a bit before moving on to our next stop, the Little Big Horn Battlefield.
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