Touchgrass

Motorcycle trip / South Dakota / August 2026

Sturgis +The BlackHills

A photo essay from the ride west, the rally, the hills, the machines, and the long way home.

Road edges, rally crowds, quiet hills, and small pauses from a motorcycle trip through South Dakota.

I traveled 9 hours from Omaha to Sturgis in order to take photographs of the annual motorcycle rally. It was a trip full of riders foregoing helmets, gas station Red Bulls, and dusty logging roads.

I drove north through turbulent winds, and each time I stopped to refuel or stretch my legs I encountered motorcyclists in greater numbers. Our eventual aggregation could be likened to the great migration of the Sandhill Cranes, but with seemingly more squawking and soaring. The Black Hills have an interesting energy to them, and the roads are world class for motorcyclists. I'm never disappointed with a trip to the woods, so I will definitely be back in the future to really take advantage of what the region has to offer.

The journey to the rally was an odyssey, but the rally itself was a circus. It was an interesting mix of families who seemed to have gotten lost on their way to Mt. Rushmore intermingling with desperados and outlaws who had given up the run and settled back into society. Many elderly men with faded tattoos on their sun-kissed arms offered stories of their previous travels and tiny adages about hearing the hooves of deer on the asphalt before seeing them with your headlights.

THE NUMBER ONE RULE WAS TO BE IN CAMP BEFORE DARK

Muted badlands and open South Dakota landscape photographed during the Sturgis and Black Hills trip.
A long gravel road cutting through open prairie under a quiet sky.
A gravel road bending into trees beside a small yellow sign.
Black and white photograph of a man sitting outside a storefront.
Black and white side profile of a tattooed man standing near a doorway.
Black and white photograph of a person opening a wooden storefront door.
A rider sitting on a motorcycle in busy rally traffic.
Black and white photograph of motorcycles parked beneath white tents.
Crowds and motorcycles along a Sturgis street in black and white.
Two men talking beside motorcycles at the rally.
A rider seated on an orange motorcycle near tents and parked bikes.
A motorcyclist riding through warm evening light at the rally.
Three people sitting in hazy black and white light beneath trees.
A wide view of layered South Dakota hills under a pale sky.