We carefully planned our visit to Sturgis, South Dakota, to avoid the 84th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally from August 2nd to 11th, 2024! Since we had never been to Sturgis, it quickly became apparent that it is set up to handle the thousands of motorcycles that descend on the town annually. However, when we arrived on the 17th, it was nearly a ghost town!
Custer National Park
We chose Sturgis as our base, but it was not necessarily our destination. The next day, our itinerary took us to the Crazy Horse Memorial and the Indian Museum of North America. The art on display appealed to me the most, but the history was fascinating. They have been working on this memorial since the early 1900s; it is still incomplete! From there, we drove through the Black Hills and the Badlands National Park toward Mt. Rushmore.
Mt. Rushmore
The drive through the Badlands was more exciting than the monuments! Of course, we came across more Buffalo and even a few donkeys, but the real fun was going through some interesting tunnels! We discovered many switchback roads, steep mountains, and tricky tunnels during our summer adventure.
Devils Tower
Our timing could not have been better! We visited Devils Tower on August 19th, a clear and warm morning. As you can see, we took the long hike around the Tower, up and down some steep and narrow trails. Then, we had an excellent late lunch nearby at the Campstool Cafe at the Devil’s Tower KOA. Just an hour or so later, a supercell developed across northeast Wyoming and tracked directly over Devils Tower, where it caused extensive damage to trees, buildings, and campers and broke windshields on RVs and vehicles! We learned later that an EF1 Tornado had touched down, causing damage to the KOA campground and the restaurant where we had just dined!
Luckily, we were not camped in that KOA with our Airstream, or it would have been destroyed. This was not the only time we missed a major weather event this summer, but it was the closest call.
As we left the Dakotas and headed for Chicago, we made a few interesting stops. First, Wall Drug Store had so many billboards advertising that it was the world’s largest drug store that we had to stop. It’s the only thing in the town of Wall, a 76,000-square-foot collection of cowboy-themed stores. It started as a humble small-town drugstore offering weary travelers free iced water. Now, they sell lots of homemade donuts!
As we passed through a corner of Iowa, we saw billboards for the World’s Largest Truck Stop, so we stopped. It was no Buckee’s, but it was big, and we had lunch and filled the tank before continuing our journey East.
Next stop, Chicagoland!