Leaving out of Dayton, WY we still have about 220 miles to go to Spearfish.



Lots of wide open land and big sky!




Getting close to Gillette.




Great road, relaxing riding, the TG is at home running this road 75-80 mph.




The first hint of what is coming.




Mary in the mirror getting a pic of our shadow.




At this time the rain & lighting looked to be north of us and moving further northwest....



...but to be safe we pulled off in a rest stop to put on our rain suits. While we were pulling them out of the trunk a guy stopped on a SG. He said he had just come from Rapid City (near Spearfish) and that the storm had already crossed north of the road and we would be fine.

We talked with him a bit...he was headed toward Red Lodge for the Beartooth Rally that we had just left.

Taking his advice, we put the rain suits back in the trunk and headed on our way.

Well, a bit down the road we could see that the storm was directly in front of us and smell the rain. Stopped along the side of the road and put the rain suits on.



Yep, looks like we are headed right into it!



Just 2 minutes further we run into wet road.




More in next post. Another minute or so down the road we see white stuff on the side of the road....




Then the white stuff is on the road. Not snow, but pebbles of hail.




Probability is high that if we had not spent the 20 minutes or so at the rest stop we would have been right on this section of road when the hail started coming down.

There is NO shelter anywhere...that probably would have hurt!

The further we go the heavier it is on the road.




The pictures don't show it, but where it looks like it is just water on the road, there is still a lot of hail mixed in. It is like riding on marbles. All the traffic slowed way down, including us.

This next picture shows how heavy the water is on the road...It is an inch or two deep...quite apart from the riding on marbles feeling, any kind of speed would result in hydro-planing.



After a few miles of this the roads were just wet off and on all the way to Spearfish. Mary got a lot of good cloud pics.



btw, the storm is to the south of us now...go figure.





Closing in on Spearfish.



We are looking forward to a couple of days in the Black Hills...almost there.



A few more cloud pics as we roll into Spearfish.







When we pull into the motel at Spearfish, sky is clear and the roads are dry.

We unload the bike, shed the rain suits and head to the grocery store.

We are going to be here a couple of days, so we are taking our time shopping so we don't have to come back before leaving. We're not done yet and we here some loud booms...yep, when we leave the store it is raining HARD! lol

No jackets, no helmets, we do our best to load the groceries without getting too much water in the trunk and ride the 2 miles back to the motel in a full-on downpour.

It rained off and on all night.

Here's a pic of the TG getting cleaned up a bit by the rain outside the room.




Next up will be some riding around in the Spearfish/Sturgis/Deadwood area.