Lake Angeline and Sturgis

OK everyone, this week we get a double dose of the action.

As I said in the last blog I was going to attempt to hike to 10,600 ft to go fishing and I'm pleased to say I made it up there and back. The other thing we've done is visit the Sturgis motorbike rally; a great spot for bike enthusiasts and just the place to pick up a second hand harley going cheap.

Firstly though, Lake Angeline.

Lake Angeline is situated in the Big Horn mountains 10,600 ft above sea level. The only way up there is walk or by horse as no wheeled vehicles are allowed in the wilderness area. It takes about an hour to drive from Gillette to Buffalo then another hour to get to the edge of the wilderness area where we had to leave the cars. The last 40 minutes were along the worst 4X4 track I think I've ever been on. The walk starts at about 8000 ft and it took us about 3 hours to get to the edge of the tree line, where we camped at 9,800 ft. It's pretty much all up hill with not a lot of places where it flattens out, but we took our time and all made it up there.





It was nice to be up in the cool air after the heat of Gillette and after camping the night we took off in the morning for another hour up hill to where the lake is.
The view from the top is pretty spectacular although fires in Montana meant that a lot of the prairie looking east was too smoky to see. Evidently on a clear day you can see forever; the next highest point east is the French Alps.

Up above the tree line thre is not a lot except for rocks and a few scrubby outcrops. The rocks have all been left there by glaciers that carved out the mountains. There is still a small glacier that feeds into the lake that we were able to walk on; pretty good considering it was the height of summer.

During the day we managed to catch 7 good sized trout (I caught 2) that we cooked over the open fire that night; they were beautiful.





The next day, Sunday, it was time to head back down and home. Thankfully coming down wasn't quite so strenuous as going up and it only took two hours to get back to the car. On getting back to the car though we found both cars had a flat tyre each; pretty suss as we hadn't noticed it when we left them. We had only seen two other groups of two people on horse back up at the lake and one of the groups seemed pretty stand-off ish; we think they may have let the tyres down as both tyres tested ok when we got back to Gillette.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The Sturgis motorcycle rally started 67 years ago by a group of Harley enthusiasts looking for somewhere to go for a bit of a holiday and to ride their bikes. It's held in Sturgis, South Dakota on the edge of the black hills and has grown into the biggest biker gathering in the US. It officially goes for a week but bikes come and go for about three weeks through August.

We went over on Friday night and stayed at Deadwood which is not that far from Sturgis. As usual Deadwood was a lot of fun and the whole street was lined with Harleys from one end to the other.
With so many people around there was plenty of entertainment although Gae and I wondered if we'd fit the biker mould. We thought of buying some leathers to see if we'd fit in but then were worried someone would want to see our bike.




Over in Sturgis the bikes (and babes) were really something to see. Many of them would not have been legal back home and while the bikes looked pretty spectacular I'm sure they would not have been too comfortable on a long ride.





One of the bars we went to called The Bone Yard had organised for the Budweiser Clydesdales to parade around so we managed to see them doing their stuff.




On Sunday we went across to Rapid City to Blackhills Harley Davidson to see if there were any good specials; unfortunately it looks like I'm stuck with the push bike when we get home.

To see more of the photo's click on the link below.

Until next time; have fun. We are :-)

Lake Angeline and Sturgis