The Plains

Day 43 - 485 Miles

After taking a few days off, just resting and roaming the area, it was time to move on from Minnesota. My rear tire is looking like a slick and the front is not much better... I wouldn't want to ride them through another torrential rain, let alone a light street slickening drizzle, so I chose Rapid City as an eventual destination... I know that Rice Honda is there (from my Sturgis trip last year) and I'm hoping they'll have my tires there.

I met some South Dakota bikers near the Minnesota border and they gave me some ideas of places to go, but most of those places are on the Interstate and I'm intent on following US-14. That worked out well but it's straight and mostly flat through South Dakota.





I liked this custom trike one of the ladies was riding



The detours though... whew... through dirt roaded residential areas... and across some of the slowest freight lines. This one took 15 minutes to pass.



I did note that the S.D. farmers aren't all hopping onto the corn bandwagon and saw a lot of wheat, oat, and other grain fields. None-the-less, all the gas stations also pump E85 (meaing 85% ethanol). But they also offer ethanol-free regular gas. So the 89 octane with 10% ethanol is actually cheaper than the 87 octane gas... and my bike has been running fine on 10% ethanol that's offered in the rest of the country in the regular. The E85 is about 75 cents to a dollar cheaper than the cheapest gas... but I don't know if that makes up for the premium you pay for an ethanol burning car/truck. Are the convertible? Or are you stuck driving them in S.D. and the nearby states because I didn't see a lot of it offered further east or south and it's certainly not in California yet.

I ended the day in Wall South Dakota and took in the "famous" Wall Drugs. The town is dedicated to tourism at the entry to the Badlands.








Total Miles: 12,046