I couldn’t help but wonder as we were riding through the Black Hills and the roads were lined with bikes going both directions and hardly a car in sight, in the Black Hills, during the Sturgis rally, do car drivers wave at each other?

It’s beyond pointless to say I’ve never seen so many motorcycles in my life. That was a given. What did surprise me was the number of women riding their own. If a group of 10 bikes went by it was almost a certainty that one or even two or three would be women. You don’t see those numbers anywhere else that I’ve ever been.

What people who have never been to the rally may also not understand is that the rally is not just in Sturgis. It is actually a regional rally. All the other towns are packed with bikes, like Deadwood, Keystone, Custer, Spearfish, and of course Rapid City. And then there are the numerous campgrounds outside of Sturgis where a sizeable admission fee buys you not just a campsite but nightly concerts by top name bands. Sturgis itself is just one spot that probably everyone drops in on at least once but where only a very small number actually stay.

I had been a bit uncertain about going to the rally because I was envisioning just three days of solid partying in Sturgis but that wasn’t the case at all. We did spend the better part of one day in Sturgis doing the drinking, shopping, and people watching thing, but the rest of the time we spent riding the fabulous roads of the Black Hills. Which really suggests that making the Black Hills a destination for an extended stay when the rally is not making things crowded and expensive is an appealing vacation possibility.

Those are some initial thoughts about the rally. I’ll have more on the trip later.