Black Hills Blast - Self-Guided (USA)

Two nights and around 310 miles from Rapid City on a Royal Enfield, ridden self-guided, and it is the shortest way to see the core of the Black Hills.

The route is a condensed version of the operator’s longer self-guided loop. Custer comes first on Black Hills back roads, taking in Mount Rushmore, where four presidents are carved into a granite face at a scale photographs never quite convey, and the Crazy Horse memorial nearby, which has been under construction since 1948 and will be the largest sculpture in the world if it is ever finished.

Deadwood follows through Custer State Park, where bison, pronghorn and prairie dogs are usually about, and Sturgis, which is an ordinary small town for fifty-one weeks of the year and host to several hundred thousand motorcyclists for the other one. Deadwood itself is a preserved gold rush town where Wild Bill Hickok was shot, and the saloons trade on the fact.

The return to Rapid City runs through Spearfish Canyon and Lead, with the Sanford Lab visitor centre at the old Homestake mine, the deepest in the northern hemisphere, now repurposed as a physics laboratory a mile and a half underground. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person in US dollars. Departures run most weeks through the year, which makes this a practical addition to a trip to South Dakota taken for another reason, or a short standalone ride for anyone who wants Rushmore and Sturgis without committing a full week to the region.