Our Sturgis Trip

[moonstar]

We got back from Sturgis on Sunday....exhausted but safe! I took the car with our 2 children and my husband drove the trike. I fullly intended on driving part of the way but it just didn't happen. We left the 31st and drove just west of Bismarck, ND for the night. On Saturday we drove the rest of the way. Once we got to Belle Fourche SD the scenery became breath-taking. Until that point it was pretty boring.

We met 4 of my sisters and some of their families and all stayed with a friend of mine in Spearfish, SD. That area is absolutely beautiful! After we got to the Hills we put 1000 miles on the bikes! Obviously, our trip was more about sight seeing and riding in beautiful scenery than the rally itself.

We had a significant fuel line leak Monday evening, so experience HOG roadside assistance first hand. Since it was so late in the day the trike was hauled to Spearfish (from Sturgis) and the next morning it was taken to the Harley dealer in Rapid City. The tow truck driver told me to go just ahead of them and get in line for the ticket write up. Well....I went to turn in to the dealership and couldn't even get in due to the number of bikes in front of me! I know there were at least 200 motorcycles going in to the dealership. They had vendors set up in the parking lot, so they weren't all going in for various repairs...but enough of them were! I thought to myself...we are so screwed...we will be down all day waiting for repairs! The man in line that was writing up the repair order could tell I was irritated and said..."You will be OK. It's early in the day, you will be next on the rack and yesterday we ran 14,000 bikes through here". I questioned him in disbelief and yes....it was 14,000 bikes. They bring in mechanics from other dealers, as well as factory reps. If your bike (or trike in our case) can be repaired while you wait in line, they fix it in line! They had different areas set up for different issues.....bikes with light issues went one way, tire isses another, etc., etc. I am sure many of you know this, but I was very new to all of it. (We attended the rally last year...without a motorcycle!)

We were out of the shop by 10:30...about 2 hrs. after getting in the line! The mechanic was awesome, we met some great people (including Sonny Barger, the founder of Hell's Angels and had our photo taken with him) while we waited and I went away a happy customer.

Like I said before we did a lot of riding....we rode the Needles Highway, Spearfish Canyon, Custer State Park including the Wildlife Loop where a herd of buffalo decided to take over the road, went to Deadwood, Keystone and Hill City, went to Devil's Tower and Hewlett, WY., as well as other rides. We did make it to the rally 3 different times!

We managed to be riding in 2 very strong thunder storms. The first was at night with an awesome lightning display. (I know...shouldn't have been in it, but got caught!) The lightning lit up the countryside with purple for miles, and the bikes were silhouetted in purple, making for a beautiful scene. That night we got hailed on and poured on so hard we had to pull over. The traffic was bumper to bumper in both lanes of the interstate and bikes and cars were pulling on and off the road. I witnessed my brother in law (with my son on the back of his bike) nearly get hit by a pickup and trailer, and witnessed my husband come within inches of getting rear ended by a vehicle. This was the ONLY time I was truly afraid for our safety. I told my daughter to start praying while I concentrated on driving.

We got caught during the daylight on Friday in another severe storm, again with marble sized hail in it and a drenching, heavy, downpour! My husband could only see the road by watching the white line on the side. Again we pulled off under an overpass and let the storm pass. We were on the leading edge of this storm and it produced hail larger than baseballs as it moved eastward, totaling many bikes and vehicles a mere 3 miles from where we were stopped!

This past Saturday we left Spearfish at noon and headed for home. My husband drove the trike and I followed in the car....again with intentions of driving the trike part of the way home! An hour into our 9 hour trip my husband pulled over to the shoulder of the road. I got out of the car and he said "I lost all power to the trike....the cruise kicked off and it sputtered and died, and the battery is dead!" The Stador went out on the bike! So I drove the 26 miles (each way) to Buffalo, SD and purchased jumper cables. We charged the battery for an hour and headed to Bowman, ND. My sister and her husband rescued us there and hauled the trike to the Harley dealership in Mandan, ND.

On Sunday, we decided to try and charge the battery and see if we couldn't get the trike the last 100 miles to our dealership in Jamestown, ND. This worked out and the trike is STILL in Jamestown.

We ordered LED lights before we went to Sturgis to resolve the issues we have been having with the light bar and they still aren't in! We also had the latch on the fuel door break on our trip, so they replaced the whole door with one of my choice and replaced our wearing out grips with Kuryakyn Iso Grips. When they installed the new radio they forgot to install the wiring harness that allows us to use the handlebar controls for the radio, so they did that now too. Once the lights come in they will replace them and we will have it back.....hopefully out of the repair shop for the rest of the summer!

Overall, we had a wonderful trip, met some awesome fellow riders, saw great scenery, stayed safe, and were very glad to be home! I apologize for the length of this post but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't leave parts out! Yes....I know....post pics!

[Nana]

DON't APOLOGIZE! The story and details were a great read . You'll have memories of a lifetime out of this trip, won't you.

[moonstar]

Can't believe I forgot to mention....we toured the Lehman factory and saw lots of new TriGlides being put together. They have a very pretty 2 tone blue and silver trike coming out. We saw MANY trikes in Sturgis this year....way more than last year, and many of those were TriGlides...many of those TriGlides were the black and red ones. We saw very few blue TG's and maybe the two tone paint will help sell more of the blues!

[Gorilla]

Nice ride moonstar. Glad you had a great time despite the rain and break down. Good recovery by the way. Ted

[Juju]

Great trip report--thanks for sharing all your highs and lows with us. I'm glad to hear that you got home safely, and yes, I'm watching for pix!

[dwiht]

Hey what a great story, reminds me of last year coming home from Sturgis and a tornado set down very close to us. Everyone was running and it did flip a car when it crossed the highway behind us. That is what makes memories that you will always remember. Glad you made home safe and sound.

[chatty]

Glad to hear of your ups and downs coming out all right We just came back from Sturgis as well, we stayed at Broken Spoke on a hill. Didn't realize how windy it was out there, no trees to slow the wind down. We took the tour at Lehman and they fixed my trike as well, I know they were really busy too. We missed the hail as we decided to ride back, I rode my trike and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Some people are curtious and some want to run over you! My husband had to use his HOG roadside asistance too, was surprised at how quickly they fixed his bike, just about 2 hours and we were on our way. Of course we didn't know there was anything wrong until we had packed up and started the bike to leave. But the scenery was breathtaking, I loved the badlands I was surprised at how many trikes were out there too!

[1800 06 Champion Trike]

We left Wisconsin on Friday 8-7 and got to Spearfish Sat 8-8. We also just missed the Hail Friday.
Did any of you stay at the Super 8 in Spearfish. We were ther Sat nite and Sun nite.
From there, we headed west to Cody, The Big Horns, Jakson Hole, Yellowstone, Cooke City, Beartooth, Red Lodge, Billings, Sheridan and back to Spearfish.
We then did the Sturgis shopping trip for shirts, etc and toured around the area before heading back to Wisconsin.
Arrived home safe (just short of 4,000 miles) and with many memories plus 400 pictures I had developed yesterday.
This trip was a remake of the trip we did in 1993 and believe me, we'll not wait that long to do it again. Maybe next year!!