Meals and more

Well, the moment some have been waiting for, me included.  I've managed  to have three good meals yesterday and today.  The first was an excellent breakfast bacon, sausage, eggs, hash brown potatoes, toast, jam and coffee at the Cheyenne Crossing Stage Stop Café; the name lone is worth the mention, but the meal is what is worthy of note.  on the road to theCrazy Horse Meemorial, of which more later.  Thee second is lunch today at the Loud American Roadhouse on a return visit to main Street in Sturgis. The place itself is huge, with a big stage where various acts will perform during the upcoming rally, as is the the Jack Daniels tent that has been set up in the parking lot next door. The meal was a grilled chicken breast on a bun with lettuce, tomato, and a sauce made with blue cheese dressing and tobasco sauce. It was delicious with the lemonade (a beer would have been nice but I was setting off on a particularly twisty piece of road: the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway after lunch). And to complete my trifecta of gastronomic delights, I had dinner this evening in a steak house but blocks away from the Ramada where I'm staying. Turns out that if instead of walking left out of the hotel driveway if I had gone right, over the interstate I would have discovered Minerva sooner. I had perfectly cooked New York strip steak, with silky smooth garlic mashed potatoes, and perfect little asparagus spears, accompanied by two glasses of Kenwood Pinot Noir.

And now for the more. Yesterday I rode, again on some great roads, to the Lakota Indian Crazy Horse Memorial, the world's largest mountain carving in progress located near Custer, in South Dakota's southern Blackhill's.The work was  started in June of 1948 by the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and his wife and some of his 10 children are still involved in the project that is so massive that there is no projected completion date.

The top and bottom pictures show what has been accomplished to date, the middle one, with the mountain in the background, shows the model of what the finished sculpture will look like,  To put things in perspective, the four faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore would fit in the space taken up by the face of the indian warrior Crazy Horse. 

I then road from this site back to Rapid City, via Mount Rushmore on Iron Mountain Road. Just when you trhink things can't possibly get more challenging, they do. In addition to narrow and short tunnels, switchbacks and hairpin turns with posted speeds as low as 15 mph, you're introduced to something called a pigtail. As the next picture shows this is a stretch of road that curves over itself like an extremely tight corkscrew.

It's an impressive piece of roadwork.

Finally today I rode north from Sturgis on the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway that follows a small river in a beautiful gorge as the next  two pictures show.

And finally in today's news, it seems that my extended Rapid City tour will soon end.  After another 45 minute call with Jennifer at garmin International it seems that we have the GPS situation sorted out (it turns out that Irwin didn't know his --- from his elbow and he'd totally screwed up the assignment) and a new unit has been shipped today and i should be receiving it by close of business tomorrow. Let's all keep our fingers crossed so that i can start the next phase of this journey, the ride to Nashville where I will be meeting Jane on Sunday.