Twisted Travels

Brian sent in some reports and photos of his “Twisted Travels” this summer:


First up is our trip cross country. It was mostly uneventful. We did it kind of quick because we had to get to WA to close on our house. I did, however, convince Beth to pull the bike off the trailer in the Black Hills. If you’ve never ridden in South Dakota, I highly recommend it. The roads are nice and the scenery is beautiful. There is also a lot of history in the area. The weather wasn’t particularly accommodating for picture taking, so I only took a couple of the monuments.

First is Crazy Horse. Take a look at http://www.crazyhorse.org/. It’s pretty incredible what’s being done. Pay special attention to the size they’re carving this thing. From wikepidia “The sculpture's final dimensions will be 641 feet (195 m) wide and 563 feet (172 m) high. The head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet (27 m) high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mt. Rushmore are each 60 feet (18 m) high.” Wow!

Here’s a picture of the current progress.





Then we went to Mt. Rushmore. Unfortunately, we were there on Wednesday, July 2nd, the day they were having the 4th of July fireworks at the monument, so it was packed! We saw a couple of mountain goats on the side of the road as we crawled our way toward the entrance, but I couldn’t get the camera out in time. Since the park was so crowded, we didn’t bother going in. I just pulled over in the blocked off turn lane so I could take some pictures. The cop directing traffic didn’t mind; however, his supervisor did and we both got yelled out when he drove by. Sorry I got you in trouble, officer!




After that we headed up through Sturgis. The town is very quiet outside of bike week so we did a quick run through the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum http://www.sturgismuseum.com/. Any two wheeled enthusiast should add the museum as a destination for when they’re in the Black Hills.

Since there aren’t a lot of pictures from the South Dakota ride, I’ll add some others that I took this morning. As Beth and I were on our way home last night, I made a comment about how awesome Mt. Rainier looked as the sun was setting. She said I should take her to the train in the morning and get a look at it as the sun comes up. I figured I’d do one better and head to Sunrise Pass to watch the sun come up over the mountain. It was a bit brisk as I made my way up the mountain (mid 40’s), but it was worth it when I got there. The pictures don’t do it justice, but it was absolutely breathtaking watching the sun come up in the shadow of the mountain. 30 miles of sweepers and 10 miles of tight twisties in each direction also made for a really nice ride.

See how many Twisted Farkles you can spot on my V-Strom!







Thanks for the update, Brian! Next week I’ll post the pictures from his trip on the Twisted KLR.

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