Today is a transit day. There’s no other way to put it.

Not much to see, not much to do.

Just saddle up and ride. Find some good tunes to listen to. Think of the great sights we’ve seen and roads we’ve ridden. And point north toward Sturgis.

It would take a blog miracle to make this interesting. I’ll give it a go.

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Today, our sole reason for being is to ride the 296 miles from Cheyenne to Rapid City, South Dakota, so we can join a half-million other bikers waiting for the 77^th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to begin.

Our day begins by riding north along Interstate 25 out of Cheyenne.

We roll past Warren Air Force Base, pretty confident that there were no overnight ICBM launches.

We’re on the Interstate for only six miles before turning east on US Highway 85, which we’ll be on for the next 180 miles. Eighty-four miles after leaving Cheyenne, we arrive in Torrington, which sits along the banks of the North Platte River. Torrington is the first civilization of any consequence we’ve seen since leaving Cheyenne.

A city of 6,500, Torrington was founded in 1900 by W.G. Curtis. He named the city for his hometown of Torrington, Connecticut. Torrington, Wyoming, is home to Eastern Wyoming College, a two-year community college, Torrington also hosts the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution, a prison with more than 300 inmates.

Not that you’d know it, but Torrington is within five miles of the Wyoming/Nebraska border. Much of Highway 85 is not far from Nebraska, a state I’ve never been to, and it would be the seventh state on our trip – if we bothered to check it out.

I know little about Nebraska, other than its college football tradition, miles and miles of corn, and the Movie Nebraska, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film in 2013.

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From Torrington, it’s another 55 miles north to the next town of note: Lusk. Much of eastern Wyoming is high plains, and Lusk is no different. It sits at 5,020 feet.

With a population of 1,567, Lusk is best known for being the county seat of the least populated county in the least populated state in the US.

Lusk was founded in 1886 by Frank Lusk, a renowned Wyoming rancher and partner in the Western Live Stock Company. Apparently, little has changed; the primary industry in Lusk is still cattle ranching.

Lusk’s motto: “Little Town with Big Possibilities.” Its most famous former resident is James Watt, US Interior Secretary from 1981 to 1983. Watt was born in Lusk in 1938. In 2008, Time magazine named Watt among the 10 worst cabinet members in modern history, and Rolling Stone magazine called him the Patron Saint of the Moral Majority. There are no famous current residents of Lusk.

But Lusk does have a street with a fun name, Beer Can Road, which we pass on our way out of town.

And, it’s got some mighty fine gas stations, one of which we visit before our final push into South Dakota.

From Lusk, we continue north for 46 miles, then turn east on US Highway 18, and cross into South Dakota, the seventh of nine states on our journey. South Dakota, at last!

First town we come to on Highway 18 to is Edgemont, which lies on the far southern edge of South Dakota’s Black Hills. Edgemont’s claim to fame is that it’s a crew change point for Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight trains.

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In the 1800s here in the Plains, buffalo were huge, pun intended. Turn the clock back to the 1850s, and you’ll understand why.

In the prairie and Black Hills, buffalo were everywhere. Sixty million buffalo once roamed the Great Plains. Hunting killed millions of them. By 1889, when South Dakota became a state, the buffalo was nearly extinct.

Today, an estimated 500,000 buffalo currently loll their lives away on private lands. About 30,000 more are on public lands – many of them in South Dakota. For South Dakotans, the buffalo is a symbol of pride. For Native Americans, it’s a sign of spiritual strength.

The scientific name for the buffalo is Bison bison. Its true name is the American bison.

European explorers gave the American bison the name of buffalo. Whatever you call them, they are huge animals – and we expect to see a boatload of them as we ride the Black Hills over the next week.

Buffalo look lazy and slow. Looks can be deceiving. They weigh more than a ton, are as high as six feet and as long as eleven feet. They’re freakin’ huge, but they can outrun and outmaneuver a horse. Not exactly sure what happens when they come face-to-face with a Harley. We’ll get back to you on that.

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We’re finally in the Black Hills.

The Black Hills are a small, isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains, whose highest peak is 7,244-foot Harney Peak. Not exactly Rocky Mountain-worthy, but it would be rude to hold any area responsible for its geography.

Black Hills? The Lakota Indians considered the hills black because of their dark appearance from a distance, as they were covered in trees.

Native Americans have a long history in the Black Hills. After conquering the Cheyenne tribe in 1776, the Lakota took over the territory of the Black Hills. In 1868, the US government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty, exempting the Black Hills from all white settlement forever. But when an expedition led by General George Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills in 1874, thousands of miners swept into the area in a frenzied gold rush.

During the gold rush, the US Government defeated the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies, taking control of the region, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Lakota never accepted the validity of the US appropriation and to this day, they continue efforts to reclaim the area in the Black Hills that was once theirs.

Today, the Black Hills may be best known for Mount Rushmore and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

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A few miles north of Edgemont, we turn north on South Dakota Highway 89, which takes us into the heart of the Black Hills. The Black Hills National Forest is predominantly ponderosa pine, and has an area of more than 1.25 million acres. The forest includes many of the areas we’ll visit the next few days.

US Highway 18 takes us past the Fossil Cycad National Monument. At least it used to be one. Fossil Cycad was a National Monument from 1922 to 1957, when the National Monument designation was withdrawn. Cycad lost its National Monument status because vandals stole or destroyed all of its visible fossils.

It’s often called South Dakota’s forgotten National Monument.

Not far from us is the eastern side of Wind Cave National Park, part of the Black Hills National Forest. Wind Cave was the first cave anywhere in the world to be designated a national park. Wind Cave is the sixth-longest cave in the world, with more than 140 miles of explored cave passageways. On average, four new miles of cave are discovered every year.

The cave is notable for its displays of the calcite formation known as boxwork. About 95 percent of the world’s discovered boxwork formations are found in Wind Cave.

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We turn onto South Dakota Highway 89 just north of what used to be Fossil Cycad National Monument. Fifteen miles later, we pass through the tiny town of Pringle, whose population is officially listed at 112. Pringle has a post office and a bar, but does it offer complimentary Pringles? It also has a secluded compound connected to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. The 150-acre compound reportedly has six residential structures, 61 bedrooms, and houses up to 250 devoted followers of convicted FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is serving a life sentence for two felony counts of child sexual assault.

From Pringle, we approach the historic city of Custer, then roll through Hill City. Both have their roots in the Black Hills mining rush of the late 19th century.

As we wind through the Black Hills, we eventually find our way to US Highway 16, which takes us the remaining 20 miles to Rapid City, tonight’s destination.

Rapid City, known as the “Gateway to the Black Hills,” is our home for the next five days. Named after Rapid Creek, on which it sits, Rapid City is South Dakota’s second-largest city. Elevation here is 3,200 feet.

The largest sector of the Rapid City economy is government services – local, state and federal. One of the area’s major employers is Ellsworth Air Force Base, home of the 28^th Bomb Wing.

The base has 27 B-1B Lancers, long-range bombers produced in Southern California by Rockwell International (now Boeing). The base, with a 13,500-foot runway, is one of only two B-1B bases in the world.

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We settle into our Rapid City motel, and look forward to dinner, more so than we have all week.

Tonight, we’ll get a table for six. Yes, six.

Do the math. Gary + Dave + Scott + Randy = Four.

+ Gail + Jackie = Six.

In a first for any of my Harley trips, our wives, at least the cool ones, are joining us. Woo-hoo!

Earlier today, Gail (Mrs. Dave) and Jackie (Mrs. Scott) flew north to Rapid City from the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California. They will ride with us for the next five days as we explore the Black Hills, Badlands National Park, Devils Tower National Monument, Mount Rushmore National Memorial – and finally, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally!

In what can only be described as a first-class bummer, Sarah (Mrs. Gary) recently had to bow out of our Sturgis adventure. On-going back and neck pain made her participation impractical and potentially painful. In recent years, Sarah’s had a series of epidurals, facet joint blocks, a rhizotomy, cortisone shots in her back, neck and sacroiliac joint, and in May, an experimental procedure called a cold fusion radio frequency ablation.

Sadly, sitting on the back of a Harley for hours on end would not have provided much in the way of pain relief. I’m more than a little disappointed that Sarah isn’t here in South Dakota. Maybe another time.

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As is the custom with this blog when anyone new joins the ride, here’s a brief introduction to the newbies on Team Sturgis.

Gail Bowman: Gail, a bubbly blue-eyed blonde, is the quintessential California Girl. Born and raised in Long Beach, she attended Jordan High School, where she met Dave in her senior year. He was a jock, and she was captain of the cheerleading squad. Gail’s had some interesting jobs — importing and exporting cargo for Stevedoring Services of America, and working in Security for McDonnell Douglas. Her real calling, though, was being a stay-at-home mom for Tess and Nathan, both recent graduates of Hope International University in Fullerton, where Gail and Dave live. Gail is a member of Fullerton’s Community Emergency Response Team, which works with the local fire department and FEMA to help out in the event of emergencies like earthquakes, major fires, and terrorist attacks. She’s a devoted volunteer to the Special Olympics movement who recruits coaches and athletes, manages new sports programs, and is active in fund raising. Not one to sit on the sidelines, Gail has run 14 half-marathons, and regularly takes part in the Camp Pendleton Mud Run (she claims to love both Marines and mud). A licensed boat captain, Gail enjoys riding on the back of Dave’s Harley when the opportunity arises – which it will this week. On Sunday, Gail and Dave will celebrate their 34^th wedding anniversary riding the Black Hills. At the top of her bucket list: bungee jumping.

Jackie Gomez: Jackie took a more circuitous route to Southern California. Born in Chicago to parents from the Dominican Republic, she learned Spanish before English, and to this day, occasionally lapses into Spanglish when tongue-tied. Jackie lived in the Windy City until the age of five, when California’s blue skies beckoned and her family moved to Cerritos, a suburb of Los Angeles. In the early 1970s, Cerritos was California’s fastest-growing city and it turned out to be the geographical center of Jackie’s life. She graduated from Cerritos High School and attended Cerritos College, working toward a degree in criminal justice. The births of her children Robert, Christina and Pablo – and becoming a full-time mom – put her higher education on permanent hold. Jackie began her working career as a waitress, then became a medical assistant for an OB/GYN, where she worked for 14 years, helping women prepare for their adventure of motherhood. In 2004, Jackie joined Long Beach-based Homeport Insurance Company, and is now a claims examiner there. Homeport is a division of SSA Marine, where she met the love of her live, as she describes him – “that hunky cargo vessel Superintendent Scott Donaldson.” They were married in 2013, and their blended family of eight includes Scott’s three adult children. Jackie, who once entertained thoughts of owning her own Harley, instead enjoys riding on the back of Scott’s, primarily in Southern California. At the top of her bucket list: jumping out of an airplane. With a parachute.

Sarah Murr (Team Sturgis wannabe, status: AWOL): Sarah grew up on a small family farm in Greenback, Tennessee, where she learned to drawl (y’all) like the Southern girl she still is. From a young age, she helped keep the family afloat by milking cows, feeding chicken and pigs, hauling hay, and harvesting the crops – corn, wheat, and tobacco. In 1977, Boeing hired Sarah to be the first local employee at its new Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility, which would build centrifuge machines for the Department of Energy. Starting as a secretary, she built a 35-year career that took her to Everett, Washington, where she gave factory tours of the world’s largest building to Jordan’s Queen Noor and golf’s Greg Norman. Following her 1999 marriage to Gary (the blog dude), they grew weary of Washington’s gray skies and moved to Southern California, where she invested millions of dollars in the community on Boeing’s behalf until her retirement in 2012. In La Quinta, Sarah turned her energy to community service, serving on boards and committees, elected and appointed. She is a fitness fanatic, working out or practicing yoga pretty much every day. Sarah has a California motorcycle license, and is a former Harley owner/rider, but hasn’t ridden much in recent years.

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Day Seven Summary: Two hundred ninety-six miles, Beer Can Road, Buffalo on parade, and a table for six.

Click here to see today’s complete route from Cheyenne to Rapid City.

We’re on our way to Sturgis!

Vroom, vroom.

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Today in Bucket List History:

Bucket List Goal: “Hope Something Happens to Your Boss, Then be Prepared to Take His Place”

Goal Achieved: On August 3, 1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes the 30^th US President, after President Warren Harding dies suddenly while on a speaking tour. Many historians rank Harding as the worst of all US Presidents (history hasn’t yet had a chance to judge George W. Bush). Calvin Coolidge fun fact: he’s the only President born on the Fourth of July.

What’s on your bucket list?

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Bonus photo: this is “how the sausage gets made.” Here, Gary is busy finishing tonight’s blog post, one echaracter at a time on his iPhone.