So, Thursday, Day 6, we rode to Mount Rushmore. Neal had never seen it. I was last there about 1989 or 1990. FYI, it now costs ten bucks to get in. I won't go off on why I, as a tax payer, have to pay $10 to get to see a national momument, having already been paying for it annually for the last 32 years. They did have a nice parking lot and have remodeled the whole area since 1990. You can now get ice cream there. We were going to go on to Crazy Horse monument to see how they are doing, but the coming storm rather directed us to head back to the campground. I have learned to respect S.D. dark clouds. We made it back before the storm hit full on. Just had a few sprinkles. A lot of people pulled out from the threat of rain. Bob Costas. The campground probably had 10% of the same day in 2006.
Day 7, Friday, we rode out to Devil's Tower, WY. Stopped in Sundance on the way out and had lunch and looked at the little odd stuff shop. We didn't go into the monument itself, as it was another pay to get on the property, and you could see it just fine from the tourist shop outside the gate. I mean, it's a rock. A big one. There was a 600+ HP V8 bike with nitrous bottles on a 502 CI big block motor. Yeah, you need that. At a gas station on the way back were like 4-5 turbocharged bikes. One was that water cooled HD sort-of sport-cruiser V-Rod. I asked the guy if 100 HP wasn't enough and he said it wasn't. That one did 211 HP on the dyno the day before, with stock internals and 18 PSI and an intercooler. The turbo was a variable vane, self contained thing. No oil lines, no water lines. 65cc of oil resivoir was good for 700 miles, feeding oil through a wick to a ball bearing cartridge. Also some F.B.I. baggers with turbos. During Bike Week, every gas stop is a bike show.
I don't remember if we got rained on Monday night, but we did Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. Friday night was different. We got hailed on for a half hour plus the rain. The tornado sirens went off as we were just getting into the tent for the storm. We grabbed a jacket and ran for a building. The hail was marble to golf ball size at the campground. No pics of that, as the camera was in the bike, as was my camera phone. It was pretty bad, but we had no hail damage to the bikes. Other bikes in different parts of town weren't as lucky, and we saw some bad hail damage. Our tent, AKA The Condo, had the back wall colapse and let water in through the side window. We must have had >5 gallons of water in the tent. We bailed it out and dried it up as best we could. The sleeping bag was on the air mattress, but still wet. Not soaked, but wet. We spread it out and were coverering up with a cheap blanket I had bought in town earlier when Dr.Linda said "I wish we had a space blanket." I recalled that I have been carrying around a space blanket for the past 25+ years, went out and got it out of the saddle bag. It worked great, if a bit noisy when you roll over, and single use. Try to fold that back up. I gotta remember to buy another. Hopefully it will be another 25 years until I need to use it again.
So, we headed back out this morning, Day 8. Loaded up the trailer, somehow managing to put all the extra stuff we bought in there. I think I have a lot more weight in it somehow, or maybe just distributed differently. I gotta weigh the tounge, because however it is now, it rocks. I'm talking passing trucks at 90 MPH in a cross wind across I90, no problem. Stopped for gas and food in Rapid City on the way out. There was a hard tail chopper made from a Buell Blast. It was pretty neat. I took some pics.
receiver hitch, lights, etc. 
