Mount Rushmore and the Badlands

The last of the long open landscape ridden and finally some interesting riding! To be fair, my earlier description of this place was perhaps a little OTT. I've since met some lovely people (not obese) and been to some great places. I guess this was in part due to me starting to fall into 'New York mode,' with thoughts now starting to creep in about the nearing finish line and life returning back to normal. I even began a mileage countdown on the GPS to NY. One of the problems for me has been due to the high milage days that have needed to be ridden. Being 300-400 long I've been opting to take the 'Interstate' for six or seven hours rather than have a ten or twelve hour day on slower roads. Still riding on my own, it has been a little lonely but this day in question was fun as I hooked up with Simon on his BMW 650 Dakar for the following...
Left our 'Super8' (but alas no Tab, Captain) motel and headed up the 20 miles to Mount Rushmore for a quick look and photo. Met Tim's Tours enroute with BJ in the middle of cutting his chain off. It had reached the end of its usable life, come off and damaged his wheel. Could've been very nasty had he not have been going relatively slowly uphill. Simon then turned up also alone and after an early lunch off we went...First up the rollercoaster/scalectrics track of a road called 'The Needles Highway.' This crazy road was 13 miles of shear fun, with very tight hairpin followed by steep climb, drop, tight hairpin, tunnel, hairpin, bridge and so on. Great fun, especially with my bike (now with a round front wheel) so well suited to these types of roads and roaring like a Spitfire past the slow harleys cruising along and unable to corner. So with big grins inside our crash helmets next up was 'The Badlands National Park.' Another great road with amazing views a long long way across the landscape from a canyon like, rocky and mysterious place. If anyone's interested in more about Mount Rushmore or the Badlands then Wikipedia will do a far better job of it than me!