Mount Rushmore - Sturgis

Entering the Black Hills from the east was going uphill for some 5 hours.. I reached the USDA campground in South Dakota now, near Jewel Cave in the early evening. I hung up the 20 and 40 meter antenna's and worked LY5A, UX3MZ and some 10's of US-hams ; AA6RK, NU5DE, K0XE, K0FG, N0AIE, AB7NK, VE7DQA on 20 and the streetgang on 40 meters. Conditions on 40 aren't that good to the west in the early evening so we schedule for 0300 utc on 14285 kc. The campsite was empty except for a young couple Peter and Olga. We exchanged food and sigares :-b

The next day I visited Custer and ate some cheap and good food into town. Located some tens of miles north of the city, the Crazy Horse statue is still in the process of being carved out of the mountain. The site doesn't want to receive any government money and entrance fees and souveniers are their only source of income. Many native people around and busloads of people. I only had to pay 5$ as a cyclist.

Mount Rushmore is some 20 miles more to the northeast and located relatively high into the hills. This site is constructed quite different as the Crazy Horses. More commerce and .. free entrance for bicylists ! Took some pictures, ate icecream and drunk a beer before cycling down to Rapid City, some 40 km. more to the NE.

I entered the city by sunset and didn't found shelter nor a decent place to pitch up the tent. I tried to put it up into a parc but people said me it was not legal to do so and a thunderstorm was coming over so.. looked for a cheap motel. I had a shower, watched Star Trek and slept. In the morning I saw Gilbert conquering the green jersey in the Tour the France live on the Versus channel on cable tv over here. I streamed VRT radio1 simultaneously. The place had a great airco and swimmingpool. It costed me 50$..

I headed out of the city this morning and cycled along a maintenanceroad parallel to the interstate until I reached Sturgis. This place is famous for the yearly MC-party in august where about 50.000 mc's show up. It's alike the Daytona event but this is the real deal..

Leaving this town , meant leaving the Black Hills and so the last 'real' mountainrange in the west of America. From here on it will be open plains and I'll dive under the 1000 mtr. elevation once again since the Kamloops region in Canada ! That's more than a month ago already..

I'm heading out for Faith ,Dupree, Gettysburg,Aberdeen and Fargo and so North Dakota, by next week and reach 6000 km. by then.

Halfway trough the trip already and have changed the overview-maps the eastcoast is coming in closer. The west-USA map is packed away..

If I'm able to, I'll try to be qrv on 14345 kc and 18145 kc at 2000 utc, that's around midday over here and most of the times I'm cycling by then. It should be getting better to reach ON as I keep on going to the east..