Finnish Curve Cowboys

Our Monday route is marked with yellow on the attached map. We did a lot of kilometers compared to our actual progress southward.















We started in decent time (07:00) as the motel had no breakfast available. We rode Interstate 90 from Sundance to Spearfish South Dakota and we continued on Highway 14A to Savoy SD where we had our breakfast in a nice loghouse restaurant. The whole ride on this 14A is just perfect for "curve lovers".


The restaurant at Savoy South Dakota
















We decded to miss Sturgis on purpose as we were warned that two weeks after the big event there is nothing but discounted T-Shirts and other Sturgis-related kitsch for sale. So we rode a nice and scenic route to Mount Rushmore, stopped at Pactola Reservoir to take some pictures and were at Mt Rusmore around 10:30.


Pactola Reservoir, South Dakota













There were of coure a lot of (other) tourists as well at Mt Rushmore and we got the compulsory pictures.



The famous American stonefaces: G. Washington, T. Jefferson, T. Roosevelt and A. Lincoln. (The upper faces, that is...)

And the Mt. Rushmore souvenier shops had their own little Sturgis Departments with all kinds of Sturgis 2006 leftover junk for sale! So I had to buy myself a Sturgis cap to provide proof that I almost made it there. (The cap is not the one in this picture, though...)













Our plan was to continue at least to Casper, Wyoming as we were supposed to visit my "American brother" Rick Shenkel in Aurora Colorado on Tuesday and we did not want to leave too much miles for the Tuesday. We took the more western route towards Denver in hope to be able to ride on or at least alongside the mountains but it was not so. We arrived to Casper without meeting the mountains and decided to continue all the way to Laramie Wyoming as we thought that what the heck, it is just this dull long straights anyway. Let's just get enough of them for today. So we covered a little over 800 km and were a bit unhappy because we could have spent the day wiser as well.
We missed the Spearfish Canyon and we missed the Crazy Horse monument but instead rode a couple of hundred kilometers extra on the Wyoming plains on highways 450, 387, 220, 487 etc.... Okay, we came here to ride but honestly speaking we would do this day differently if we could do it over.


Somewhere on the vast Wyoming plains.


The weather started getting hotter as we proceeded towards Denver. Our bike therometers hit the 35 deg C mark and we thouht that this is like a poor Finnish sauna. The only difference is that you are taking it with your riding gear on...