Today was officially the transition from the drive out to the proper trip. After an antsy night of prepping the bike, I got up before six and was out the door any ready to go around 8. Tori and Dorothy took off at about the same time for their Badlands camping trip, starting with a trip to Wall Drug. It was the first time I’d loaded everything up on the Norden, but it all seemed to come together well over the past few days.
I left Wall in pretty much the opposite direction I came in, starting the morning by looping back through Badlands. This time I got to see some bison and actually stopped to take some photos.
The route swung north after the Badlands, and after stopping for a moment in Rushmore to add a few layers (it was only about 50 degrees all morning) it entered into the Black Hills. The roads and scenery were incredible, with shear cliffs, narrow tunnels, tons of switchbacks, and crazy rock formations. I can’t wait to edit together the videos for this section since there was no way to capture the scale of elevation changes and tightness of the roads in still photos.
I ran across one rider next to a downed bike who flagged me down, but it turns out he had just dropped his big BMW while changing camera batteries and needed some help with the lift.
Tunnel
Wyoming came up quickly after descending from the Black Hills and the day flattened out significantly. There’s a stark beauty to the plains in eastern WY, but after hours of the same brown grasslands and intense crosswinds I was definitely feeling restless and sore. There were some huge open pit coal mines in Central Wyoming, and while I knew theoretically that mines like that existed I’d never seen Earth-movers the size of apartment buildings before.
About the halfway point of the day I came across a road closure just before a planned gas stop. I could see the twisted remains of a motorcycle around the emergency vehicles but not much more. After gassing up and taking a break, the road was re-opened and I had to ride past the gruesome aftermath of what was definitely a fatal crash. Back on the highway I eventually came up on the wrecker hauling the twisted bike and between both scenes I did get a pit deep in my stomach.
Eventually the brown grasslands started getting greener and the terrain more varied and close to the end of the day I eventually caught a glimpse of snow capped mountains that I’ll be riding through tomorrow. It was over a 400 mile day to start the trip strong and buy a more relaxed pace later on. Tomorrow will be the Bighorn Mountains Beartooth Pass, and Yellowstone National Park.
