Road Trip 2010 Day 2: Ambivalent about South Dakota

The first two times I drove through South Dakota I hated it. Kitschy tourist billboards and dinosaur-themed water parks obstructing the views of the beautiful Black Hills, crowds of gross tourists at Mount Rushmore, swarms of Harley-Davidsons and no hotel rooms--not my favorite place.But, driving through western South Dakota in the afternoon and evening of my second day, I began to reconsider. I-90 through Eastern Montana and Wyoming is empty. Like, really empty. Closes in the winter because there are no humans to plow it and it's under too much snow, no gas for 90 miles, never see another car kind of empty. This time it felt pretty good to see other people, suburban sprawl, and fast food restaurants--and Starbucks! I hadn't seen a Starbucks since Missoula, and while it's not my favorite coffee, it's a lot better than the swill McDonald's sells, which I became intimately acquainted with later on in the trip.

Anyway, I was starting to reconsider South Dakota. Maybe, in the right context, it was actually pretty cool. Any state that has Wall Drug in it can't be all that bad. I got a little less stoked when I stopped for a nap outside a visitor's center, lay in the grass, and felt something tickling my arm. I looked down to see a grasshopper the size of my fucking finger chilling on my arm.

Grasshoppers, the myth: cute, cuddly, look like Jiminy Cricket.

Grasshoppers, the reality: ugly, terrifying, look like the aliens from District 9.

It was so big I could see that it was looking at me with its beady little grasshopper eye, probably sizing me up, figuring out if it could take me. I brushed him off my arm and went to sleep.

My faith was further shaken when I reached eastern South Dakota, which is almost as empty as Wyoming. The entire region also reeks of cow poop. Eastern South Dakota is also home to approximately one thousand gajillion bugs, half of which committed suicide on my car's windshield. About one hour after the sun went down, I drove through a bug storm. It was actually pretty amazing. I've never seen anything like it. I was used to quite a few bugs splattering on my windshield after sunset--it happens--but I drove for several minutes through massive clouds of bugs that hit my car so fast and so hard it sounded like it was raining (and hard, New Englandy rain, not soft Seattle rain). I was afraid to turn my windshield wipers on and smear my windshield into a completely opaque mess of guts, wings and shattered carapaces, so I squinted through the splatter until I reached a gas station and spent a good five minutes scrubbing it down. I wish I had a working camera. Verdict is still out on South Dakota.

I would have felt pretty bad if I accidentally killed this guy. Such a gentleman.

Road Trip Day 2: Biker Gangs

We just happened to be driving through South Dakota near the beginning of the 69th annual Sturgis Motorcyle Rally, an event that draws more than half a million Harley Davidson owners to a little town in western South Dakota. Harleys blew past us in the fast lane all day, riding in groups or by themselves, towing motorcycle trailers or flashing American flags.

As we approached Spearfish, where we planned to stop for the night, Harleys passed us in droves. They swarmed off I-90 to the fast food restaurants and bars. We ate dinner at Arby's and looked for a motel with vacancies, but no luck. It was almost dark, and I didn't want to drive the trailer at night, but we had no choice. We continued on past Sturgis to Rapid City, where the hotels were also full of Harley riders. Eventually we found a room (smoking, ugh) in a Days Inn I'm pretty sure was occupied exclusively by bikers. When I went out to get my clothes from the car, a big drunken group of them stumbled down the stairs from the second floor.

So Sturgis made our evening a pain, and we were both sick to death of seeing bikers and their bikes—especially when two of them set up camp directly outside our window in starred-and-striped folding chairs to chain smoke and talk bikes—but I liked the idea of it. I liked that without corporate sponsorship, an event can unify a culture like that. In the last few years, Sturgis's rally has drawn between 500,000 and 750,000 bikers. They catch up, carouse, compete in races and events, and generally have a great time. It's kind of a grass-roots American culture thing that doesn't happen that often anymore, and I'm glad I got to see a little bit of it.