Black Hills Harley Davidson...

We have a local dealer here in Florida, Bruce Rossmeyer's Harley Davidson, which is pretty much "ground zero" for either Bike Week in March or Biketoberfest in October. At some point during those events, you have to get to Rossmeyer's.

Well, the Black Hills Rally has a similar dealer, only it's like Rossmeyer's on steroids: Black Hills Harley Davidson.

 

 

Black Hills Harley is right off of I-90 in Rapid City, and it would be a monumental understatement to say that it's "absolutely huge". Dealers from all over the country ship bikes to Black Hills Harley for their "used bike" sale during the rally. They set up an enormous tent, and they have literally thousand of motorcycles on hand. By the end of the rally, though, the tent is pretty much empty:

Black Hills Harley has a wide array of vendors and, really, I don't care what you're looking for, if it's motorcycle related it'll be here. Hell, even if it's not motorcycle related it might be here. But the main attraction, of course, are the motorcycles. With so many of them on hand, it's hard to whittle it down to a few representative photos, but I'll try:

 

So, yeah, sensory overload. Between the clamor of the motorcycles coming and going, the performance vendors installing and testing new engine builds and stereo vendors cranking tunes after an install, it can get pretty loud, to say the least. But it's a great vibe, and one you won't really find in any other environment.

Also, they had a wide array of vendors selling sunglasses, jewelry, knives, silencers (yes, silencers!) and even guns:

 

 

Okay, so the guns were special editions with a rather clear political message but, hey, when in Rome, right? They weren't cheap, either, all being into the four figures. And, if you found yourself getting hungry, you know you're always going to find good eatin' at a motorcycle rally:

 

All in all, Black Hills Harley was quite the experience. The only aspect they lacked in was live music, which we tend to have no shortage of in Daytona. Even still, though, the sheer number of motorcycles would make up for it for any motorcycle fan, with acres and acres of them to drool over...

Sturgis Black Hills Motorcycle Rally - The Arrival

I feel somewhat remiss. After all, it's been almost a month since I returned from Sturgis, and this is the first I'm getting around to posting about it. That's okay, though. That means I've been busy and, as I like to say, "Busy pays the bills".

Add to that the fact that I had another trip to Colorado planned for the latter half of August, and I simply decided to wait for the dust to settle before sitting down at the computer.

As a reminder, this is what we were driving. It's a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter with which we were dragging an 18' trailer with a motorcycle in it:

 

Now, our drive to Sturgis was a bit of a chore. We had constant issues with the bike mount in the trailer, and those issues would turn 15 minute gas and bathroom breaks into hour long trailer repair breaks. The time in between, though, was rather restful!

 

When we did get to have just a gas and bathroom break, we got to see some pretty cool rigs on their way to Sturgis. This red and gray trailer was being pulled by a matching red and gray motor home of equal length:

 

 

If I were to guesstimate, I'd say that easily half the people we encountered on the road and in gas stations and rest areas were on their way to the rally. They were everywhere:

 

 

So, suffice it to say we eventually got to Sturgis (well, Rapid City, to be exact) on Thursday, August 4 in the afternoon and started to set up our site:

 

 

By the time we'd gotten all set up and had something to eat, we decided it was really too late to go try to do anything, so we opted to have a few cocktails at the campsite and get started with our week in the morning...