Today, the fun(ny) stuff in SD: Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, Deadwood/Bike week, etc.  I love that SD has been able to embrace the absurd without falling into kind of sad.

I’ve never seen so many motorcycles!  This photo doesn’t even really do the place justice, the parking lots were packed and main street was closed to car traffic.  All the casinos had signs up that said “Free Beer for Bikers” and I saw a lot of women in daisy duke shorts and chaps with this funny patch of skin between the top of the chaps and the bottom of their shorts… not classy, but really American.

SD has this funny relationship to the “Old West” mentality– esp when it comes to Native Americans.  I stayed in the historic Hotel Alex Johnson in Rapid City.  It was opened in 1928 and the whole lobby was this art deco homage to the Old West.  So, on one hand, there is native-style pottery but it looks really art deco too (and I don’t know if that pattern is “authentic” art deco or Native American).  The hotel was beautiful, but I’m also a sucker for hotels on the national register of historic places…