That's enough of that...

Waving.  What can I say - I'm a waver... I wave at other motorcyclists.  I would say I wave at other scooterists, but we don't see any; not and home and not around here in the Black Hills.  Right now, the number of motorcycles in the Black Hills is multiplying... waving isn't cool around Rally time.  This is the first I've noticed this season that the number of "wave-backs" is quickly diminishing.

Yes, we got out on the scoots today.  Where to?  It doesn't matter to me - I ride for the joy of riding.  Joan said she'd like to ride to Custer State Park again, maybe do the Wildlife Loop once more.

I'm in.  :-)

I got the bikes out of the cargo trailer and ready to go.  Joan reminded me that we have garbage to go...

Part of the changes at Hart Ranch due to Covid 19 is no more garbage cans at every third site; instead, there are dumpsters at three sites around the park.  Where this current site is means we take garbage when we're leaving the park.  The Vespa is the garbage hauler.  Joan met me at the dumpsters.

A lovely day; a bit breeze, but a few degrees cooler than usual.  The road names don't matter much - as I said, this is about the ride...

 

We rode through Custer State Park and to the Wildlife Loop...

A different experience from our last time here, when the buffalo were stampeding.  If you look real close at the photo above, those dots in the middle of the image are buffalo.  We also saw some antelope from a distance - I didn't bother getting another photo of dots.  ;-)

We made it to where the "begging burros" tend to hang out...

We mounted up and took off again...

Plenty of traffic, but it was stopped endlessly like our last time here.  It didn't take long to leave much of the crowd behind...

And then, more buffalo, this time closer to the road...

We rode to the main highway, and turned north.  Some discussion about where to look for a picnic table for a lunch stop.  As we came up on the Blue Bell Lodge area, we saw some unoccupied tables and decided to not pass them by.  It's picnic time!

It was a nice break.  Groups of other bikers stopped at the small general store/gas station across the road while we were eating.  I had to chuckle at the various engine/exhaust roar of the mostly Harleys.  One particularly loud bike, with his stereo blaring rolled in.  The bike was so loud you couldn't make out what was on the stereo... when he turned the bike off, it was... Sounds of Silence.  ;-)

With lunch done and us refreshed, we headed off again...

We got behind other traffic as we went through the park.  I had to wonder what the people in the minivan (above) were thinking, since they were right in the middle of a bunch of motorcycles.  Most of the motorcycles pulled off at the Coolidge General Store, and we, once again, had mostly clear roads ahead of us...

We made the turn off Hwy 16, onto Iron Mountain Road.  It wasn't long before we caught up to another group of Harleys...

Most of them turned off at the Wolf Creek Store or the Iron Mountain Road Headquarters...

And we had the roads to ourselves again...

Well, until we came across these cows wandering slowly along the road...

Another 40 minutes of some great curvy roads and we were "home" again.  Well, home away from home.  You can tell it is getting close to Rally time: the number of motorcycles was about equal to the number of cars we saw while we were out today.  That will change in favor of the number of motorcycles in the next day or two.

While watching the evening news today, one of the talking heads reported that "someone" had made an "official estimate" of what they think the crowd for the Rally will be: a quarter of a million people.  That number may sound huge, especially when you consider that the population of the entire state of South Dakota is around 850,000.  In the last decade or so, the numbers have been on the far side of 500,000.  Again, as well as they can estimate.  250,000 is a very radical drop in what the estimates were predicting prior to the pandemic.

You wouldn't know that by the number of bikes we saw in our ride today.  Mostly Harleys, ridden by "rugged individualists."  When you consider the number of Harleys vs the number of scooters we saw today (only our two), I'd say we are the rugged individualists.  ;-)