Mountain High: 8/3/2013. I will never eat python again!

Ferocious storms spoiled our sleep, but we just didn't want to see what they were doing to Magic. Day's light assured us that the bike survived, but tattered leaves and flowers smacked of hail. Small ice balls still hid under shrubs, and when we booked out of our motel, we saw areas that had to be plowed along the way out of town. The severity of the storms here make us appreciate any simple shelter even more.

Rain still hung in the sky, but we were back on the bike. My "Buffalo Safari" tour guide ran me by several huge boys standing by the road and numerous flocks grazing on hillsides. When you're on the bike and you come face to face with these hairy creatures, you realize that they are bigger than you and your vehicle. The only reassurance is that you are faster!

Riding the Iron Mt. Rd., awed again by the engineering that made this road a diorama for Mt. Rushmore, we peeked at presidential faces through well positioned tunnels. Up face to face and personal with Borglum's carvings on the mountain, the absolute wonder of it all is underwritten with a bothersome "why would anyone ever do that?"

Needles Highway ( I love that they call it a highway) sluiced off from the monument into another world. The same rock formations that prompted an artist to see faces, rise deliciously close to the bike as we knife our way through narrow passages and one way tunnels. Bike Week adds a new dimension to this road, as the roars of a multitude of engines echo through the pass.

From Needles we retreated into our own world. Freed from the Rally, we faced the wind and headed toward The Cowboy State, leaving behind a million bikes, climbing the Black Hills like ants.

Hot sage, lonely cattle and the one point perspective of Route 16 guided us to our next adventure as hundreds of bikes passed, going East, their riders thrilled to be so close to the goal.

Parked for the night in Gillette, WY, we stepped out to dinner at a local eatery that boasted "A Wild Side" to their menu. Feeling a little wild myself, I opted for the python. Snakes= muscle and I exercised my jaw for an hour! In the end, after all that chewing, it did taste like chicken. Perhaps if I were stranded in the desert and had no other options, I might try snake again, but as a gourmet dish, I think I'll have to pass next time.

Our windows open to the cool prairie night, I will fall asleep with images of stone faces, wooly buffalo, needles of stone and cowboys sitting around the campfire endlessly chewing their evening meal of rattlesnake!