Day 10 - Monday

Monday, July 19, 2010
Harwood, North Dakota, United States
This is it! The last day of the trip. However, this day will probably cover more miles than any other day. A quick check of the GPS from the hotel room said about 520 miles. Compound that with the fact that I will be switching from mountain time back to central time, so I will also lose an hour. So no time to waste, I was packed up and rolling out of Lead by 8:00am. I hopped from Lead to Deadwood, then over through Sturgis. I've never been through Sturgis before. Luckily, the main rally is still about 3 weeks out, but people were working all over the place this morning setting up large outdoor tents and loading up all the Saloons with supplies. The town was just like any normal town right now, but in a few weeks, this town will tenfold its population for a week during the rally. I heard that they get over 100,000 bikes in town during this event. Unbelievable. When driving out of town, I would see these fields that have hundreds of little camping cabins and huge lots for RVs and tents - just waiting for the people to come. I read in one pamplet at the hotel that Sturgis makes over 90% of its revenue during the 2-3 weeks around this Sturgis bike rally. That's amazing.

Not wanting to get jammed with traffic on my way home, I decided to high-tail it out of there before it's too late (j/k) . I jumped on hwy 79 up to Newell and onto US hwy 212 that will take me over half ways across the state. Not much to see around here, except for miles and miles of dairy land, so I didn't bother to take many pics. Crossing Lake Oahe (Missouri River) was very pretty though, just like Lake Sakakawea, but at a smaller scale. Still a gigantic area of water that would be fun for recreational activities. Pretty quiet around there today, but I would guess that on Saturdays and Sundays that place can be quite active.

Turned north on US hwy 83 and then east again on US hwy 12, which takes me over into Aberdeen. Since I spent a year going to school here back in the day, I thought I would take a quick pitstop and check it out again. Everything looks pretty much the same as I remember it, although they finally fixed up the terrible roads around campus. It is quite a beautiful campus really, especially during the summer when the grass is green, the flowers are fully bloomed, and nobody is there .

Stopped for gas and continued on east on hwy 12. I was surprised to see that this is now all 4 lane all the way out to I-29. I know it was mostly 2 lane when I was going to school, but then I do remember now that they were just getting started on building the road bed for the westbound lanes when I finished up with school there. It's now a very nice road. This road from Aberdeen to I-29 I remember was always a fun one to cycle on when I was going to school there, because it takes you through some small lakes and towns, and across the middle of one larger lake by a long dike. For eastern Dakotas, it's not bad at all.

From here, it was just a matter of hopping on I-29 and heading north the rest of the way home. Uneventful, but being excited to be back home finally, that was just fine with me. I pulled into my driveway just before 7:00pm. I made it!

As the 'Wing sits in my driveway, the trip odometer says 3,999 miles. How cool is that?!!!

Make sure you read this trip's post blog to get an overcap of this trip.

Miles Today: 524

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2025-02-12

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