Day 8, Friday, June 24

Today I rode from the third level of Hell (Mitchell) across the Badlands and up to Devil’s Tower. I rode through the Badlands two years ago and was stunned by their beauty. Once again they were breath taking. I’d initially planned to ride through the Black Hills, Custer National Park, and by Mt. Rushmore on this stage of my trip but because I’m running behind schedule, I decided to reschedule them to a later stage of my trip. I made it to Devil’s Tower after dark and after a WONDERFUL day of riding. Everything about todays ride was great, temperature, wind, weather, roads, interesting people and great sight seeing. This is what I like about motorcycle touring. At my last stop in the Badlands, a big brown van pulled up behind me. No sooner had it stopped than it puked out about a quart of antifreeze onto the ground. I couldn’t see the driver well because of the glare off the windshield but immediately drew conclusions about the occupants. “This is going to be bad and these people are going to irritate me.” Then it happened. I realized what I was looking at was not truly a van but rather an enlarged version of the clown car at the circus. You know the one…it looks too small for three people but about 6 or 8 pour out. Well, turns out the van was a touring group of Mennonites. An extremely LARGE group of Mennonites. All told, there were more than 20 of them crammed in that van! All of the men dressed in matching denim pants and two colors of shirts (light powder green for the young boys, and a powder blue for the older boys and adults) and the women in denim dresses and bonnets. I didn’t take a picture for fear of being rude, but I’ve got great pictures of the scene in my mind. It was quite comical and a number of the boys wanted to know about me and my trip. Very cool.