Apparently there is another religious extremist movement right here in the backyards of our very own US of A. I’m not talking about some Islamic group you might hear about on Fox News…no… Instead I’m referring to a pilgrimage carried out by thousands of people belonging to the subculture that is fanatical about… Harley Davidsons. Yes, apparently those in the know, make their very own yearly pilgrimage to Sturgis, South Dakota and call it their very own Mecca. Who knew? We’re still a few hours away from Sturgis, but we’ll let you know how it goes – maybe we can trade in the car a pair of hogs and ride them cross-country, Easy Rider style (minus the mustaches with some extra SPF 80 sunscreen for Jessica).

Update:

Well you may have noticed a bit of radio silence here. We’ve been travelling in a pretty remote part of S Dakota that has very very slow data speeds so we’ve been having trouble with picture uploads taking forever to complete or not complete at all.

Here are a few stills from last night’s trip into Sturgis. The photos don’t do justice to the scale or LOUDNESS of the event. There were literally thousands upon thousands of bikes lined up on every street and side street of this small town. Down the main street, they had two rows of bikes lined up in the center of the street with two lanes of bike-only traffic travelling on opposite sides. We parked two blocks from the main street and walked around for a good half an hour and got a great fix of people watching. What we saw was your stereotypical characterization of biker people – leather, mustaches, tatoos, long hair, bandanas, you get the idea. It was everything we had hoped for and expected. We’re definitely coming back for the Sturgis Biker Rally 2009 – maybe we’ll even play along with an honorary mustache or a pair of leather chaps.