The Quiet Part of a Very Loud Week
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Friday 🗺️ September 4, 2026 🗺️ Revisiting the Black Hills of South Dakota Happy Friday, Reader! The 86th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was a wild ride packed with jaw-dropping scenery and some good old family time. The Black Hills of South Dakota always deliver when it comes to nature that makes you want to pull over and snap a hundred photos. I had a tough time picking just one highlight, but there was one stop that totally stole the show, mainly because it made a whole row of bikers look like toy models. Devils Tower started peeking out of the Wyoming grasslands way before we even hit the exit sign. It looked just as weird and wonderful as it does in all the photos. We’d left the Sturgis noise behind for big open skies, and by the time that crazy rock came into view, we definitely weren’t the only ones slamming on the brakes to gawk. Bikers lined both sides of the road, phones and cameras at the ready, all of us doing a double take and grinning like kids. Getting up close just makes Devils Tower even weirder. Those crazy vertical grooves look like someone took a giant comb to the rock, and I totally get why Close Encounters of the Third Kind picked this spot for an alien landing. Native American lore says the grooves were created by a bear. The geologists say it’s all about igneous rock and millions of years of erosion, and the tin-hat brigade is confident it is a tree from the early days of the bible. Honestly, standing at the base with the wind whipping around and that massive rock looming overhead, it all seems pretty believable. We kicked back in the shade, stared up at that wild tower, and started tossing around theories. So what do you think: aliens, erosion, or maybe something even stranger? I paid five dollars to climb the photo stand, and even from up there I couldn't fit the whole crowd in one frame; not bad for a town that grows by 7000% for this event. Iron Mountain Road handed us this view of Rushmore from a scenic overlook, and it instantly became my favorite ride of the whole trip. Everyone on Main Street was showing off, but out here, the canyon walls closed in, and all we heard were engines bouncing off rock instead of the open sky. We rode under one of the old wooden rail bridges left over from the Black Hills gold rush days, still standing after all these years. Spearfish Canyon pulled us back to my favorite waterfall in South Dakota, the water falling exactly like I remembered. One Thing to Know: Camping during the rallyIf you're doing Sturgis, camp at the Buffalo Chip. It puts you in the middle of the action, so you skip riding into town and hunting for parking every day. We used ours as a home base this year and walked to more events than any rally before; worth it for that alone. Between the roar of Main Street and the hush at Spearfish Falls, this was the week that proved the quiet parts of a trip are the ones that stay with you. If you want to read more about the Black Hills, check out this post:
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