Good-bye Sandy!

Day 11; Just hanging around

Today we said good bye to Sandy as she had to return to the Berkshires to go back to work. We will miss her! After she packed her bags with everything Scott could fit, they left for the airport in Rapid City. Tom and I then headed for Rockford, a small town west of Deadwood; population 25. By the map, there was only one blacktop road heading in so we headed west on west out of Deadwood on 85, I think. It was 14 miles in and on the way I was thinking, wow, this is really out of the way, what could possibly be going on here? Well, there was a lot going on.
The center of the town was at the intersection of two roads. There was a general store, which was full of artsy stuff and owned by two women from Minnesota; they called it the Rockford Mall. A saloon, which was started back in the mid 1800's and looked every bit as old. It had tons of old baseball hats stuck to the ceiling. I guess people come and donate their hats to the collection. Tom tried to get me to add my Hill hat to the collection (I don't think he likes it), but I didn't . And, Rockford had a firehouse with more bays then Windsor so Tom was really impressed.
We sat on the porch of the Saloon for quite a while and watched all sorts of interesting things and characters. We met folks from Minnesota who kept us entertained and watched guys doing wheelies and other guys driving down the street while standing on their seats. Just crazy stuff.
We then met Scott in Deadwood after he saw Sandy onto the plane. Deadwood was much busier then the last time we were here. Again, we sat and just watched the people and looked at the cool bikes.
We watched a moron on a gold wing park his bike so close to another bike that there was no way the other bike could get out. The other bike had a license plate with "Rednec" on it so we thought this should be interesting. Then, this other guy pulls in on the other side of the Gold wing and was way to close to him. What a bunch of idiots. We all sat on the bench and had a good laugh with two other guys.
We met up with Tom's cousins in the Saloon No. 10 shortly thereafter. Rocky and two other friends drove out from CT with the bikes in tow (straight thru in 36 hours!) and Donato and his wife flew into Rapid City. It was nice to see everyone. They had spent a very busy day seeing Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, the Iron Road and Needles. They must have been flying to see all that. It sounds like they have a very aggressive schedule planned for their week. I hope it works out for them especially since Donato's wife told me she can't spend more than one hour at a stretch on the bike! Hmm... it mite get ugly.