A beautiful drive in the Canyon

This morning we all loaded up and headed to Sturgis, SD.  Not being a motorcycle person, I didn't know too much about this place.  Jim has a Harley, and he was excited to see this famous and roudy town.  Of course, right now it isn't rowdy.
Excerpt from wikipedia:
The population was 6,627 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Meade County and is named after General Samuel D. Sturgis. Sturgis is famous for being the location of one of the largest annual motorcycle events in the world, which is held annually on the first full week of August. Motorcycle enthusiasts from around the world flock to this usually sleepy town during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

                                 I think there are more bars and saloons than anything else in this town.  

                                        I really liked the scupture of the motorcycle at this saloon.

The Buffalo Chip is a "campground" where a lot of the cyclist stay and hold whatever it is that they have at these gatherings.

It is mostly a large field with hookups and porta- potties.  But they greet you with a very large motorcycle engine sculpture.

                                          More saloons and off we went heading for Spearfish.

The countryside is really pretty.  I love the rolling hills

The town of Spearfish wasn't what we were really wanting to see.  It was the scenic drive from Spearfish to Deadwood.  Hwy 14A is a twisted road down into the canyon.  I took over 200 pictures.  It was very hard to narrow it down to these few.

The trees were changing color, but unlike in Arkansas where we have lots of color, here was limited to mostly yellow.  The birch trees provided color from bright yellow to a deep gold.  The bits of orange looked to be sumac and ???  

This i really hard picking out just a few.  Maybe I should add some more.

A lot of the tallest rock mountains were too close to me in the car to get a picture of the whole thing. I had to wait and get further away from it and then you loose the sheer size of it.

 Deadwood is an old historic town.  This is where Wild Bill Hickok was killed while playing poker.  He was holding Aces and eights- forever after known as the "dead mans hand".

Calamity Jane and a bunch of other "legends" built this wild west town.  Gold is what brought them all here.  Today casinos bring in people.

Tomorrow we will head out for Yellowstone National Park.  I think our first stop will be Casper, Wy.  It seems there was a lot of discussion today about what route to take.  We had planned on taking 14 into Cody but after zooming down using satellite and seeing Big Horn mountain we would have to cross and the drop offs on both sides, we regrouped and decided a much safer and saner way to go was south to Casper, Wy.