Where Are We Sleeping Tonight: Rapid City KOA, Rapid City, South Dakota Starting nice and early this morning, we showered in the interesting bathroom facilities before heading off on the road to Fargo. The main reason I wanted to travel here was in honour of the Coen Brothers film, Fargo - turns out the film was shot in Minneapolis! That aside, it was a great place to visit - despite it being windier than Chicago. We had breakfast at the very funky Atomic Coffee before getting on our way once more.
With our itinery today having us drive all the way across North Dakota and then drive south into South Dakota, we have a very long way to go. Our TomTom told us that right now, we need to drive straight for 360km! I don't think I have ever seen it display a distance that big before. As we drove along, we noticed a few motorcycles around - one of which has a very cool trailer designed to look like a Chevy.
Arriving in the town of Jamestown, we found a very cool place called Frontier Village - it is full of original buildings from the frontier villages of North Dakota that have been moved to this site and filled with antiques and artifacts that bring the world of the prairie pioneers to life. We bought a couple of old cameras that still have film in them, including a box brownie! I don't know if they film will be any good but I am excited to see whats on them.
Right next to Frontier Village is the world's largest buffalo! This 26-foot-tall, 60-ton concrete giant has been standing watch over Jamestown since 1959 but it was only last year that he got his name - Dakota Thunder! He was so cute that Clare couldn't help but give him a hug :)
On the road again, we drove through an area that had had some heavy rain and had flooded the road. Thankfully the authorities had inflated large pillow like bags that were acting as sandbags. As we drove on, we drove through the town of Steele where we couldn't help but notice a giant crane... they really do love their giant animal statues here. Further along on our travels we found a large field of giant sunflowers - they were literally taller than 2 meters!
After a forgettable meal at Perkins Family Restaurant, we continued on our way to the town of New Salem. Not to be outdone by the giant buffalo and the giant crane, they have Salem Sue, the world's largest holstein cow. It is so big that we could see it from miles away. Again, Clare couldn't help but hug the cute animal...
Continuing west on I-94, we turned south just before the town of Dickinson, heading towards the town of Regent. This stretch of road is better known as the Enchanted Highway - 32 miles of road that has had numerous huge pieces of art built out of scrap metal. It was something different but again, they like things big in North Dakota! Passing through what was once the town of Lefor, we arrived in the town of Regent where we visited the official Enchanted Highway gift shop where we bought a couple of postcards as there really wasn't anything else of interest.
Continuing on our way again, we punched in our next destination into our satellite navigation device - Rapid City in South Dakota. With the best route picked out for us, we continued on our way. As we did so, we continued noticing more motorcycles than we had seen anywhere else in the US. Maybe South Dakota is the motorcycle capital of the world. As the sun set, we started to get hungry and noticed that the next big city on our travels was Sturgis. We thought we may as well get a bite to eat there and since it was getting late, we may as well stay the night there as well.
As we got closer to the town we noticed a couple of big search lights in the sky coming from a field in someones farm - slightly out of the ordinary. As we got closer, we could see that there was a giant stage with lights and loud rock music - someone was having a concert on their farm - very much out of the ordinary. As we drove by the farm, we couldn't help but notice the hundreds of motorcycles parked there for the concert. We wondered what was with all the motorcycles and as we got closer to Sturgis, the number of motorcycles on the road increased until we arrived in Sturgis and we were the only non-motorcycle on the road! Everywhere we looked there were bikers in black leather, Harleys revving loudly, loud music and what felt like general chaos everywhere. Then we noticed a banner over the street - the 71st Sturgis Motorcycle Rally! Turns out that anyone on Earth who is interested in motorcycles knows about Sturgis and it looks like they are all here! We were very surprised as we had no idea that today was the first day of the rally! Turns out that the normal population of Sturgis (6,700 people) increases during the rally by 400,000!!
With the town of Sturgis scaring us a little, we decided to drive on that little bit further to Rapid City. Arriving there we couldn't help but notice that there were motorcycles everywhere here as well! Turns out that the whole area gets over run with bikers looking for places to stay. As such, every hotel we went to was charging triple rates because they knew bikers would pay it as they need somewhere to stay. Refusing to pay excessively, we decided to camp at the Rapid City KOA. After stopping at Denny's for a wonderful dinner, we headed to the KOA only to find out that they were full! They did however say that they have an overflow carpark that we could pitch a tent in. As we were tired and without options, we agreed. Despite pitching a tent in a gravel carpark, we were charged more than the normal rate and we didn't get any facilities! I can't believe that people can price gouge here! With our tent set up next to a Harley, we crawled inside and tried to get to sleep.
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