BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK, S.D. (KELO) — Larry Depue of Illinois and Dan Magelitz of Wisconsin navigated Badlands National Park together Wednesday after attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
“Fantastic,” Depue said. “Here with my best friend. We’re having a ball.”
Magelitz says riding through the scenery is a blissful experience.
“Think of it this way when you see a dog sticking his head out the window, that’s kind of what it’s like, you know,” Magelitz said with a laugh. “That’s what they always say, anyway.”
“I’ve never seen nothing like this before,” Depue said. “I mean, I’m from a state that has corn and wheat all over. We don’t see nothing like this.”
Dan Austin of Montana was riding in the park with his son Andy, also of Montana.
“Badlands is surreal, right?” Dan Austin said. “It’s just completely different than the, we’re from Montana and we have the forests and we have the pine hills … and this is such a stark contrast.”
“It’s so open, and I love just kind of the big wide turns, and Custer State Park is amazing and the Needles Highway with such tight little turns, so here you can kind of just feel the flow a lot more and kind of go with the breeze,” Andy Austin said.
Their shared experience is a long time coming.
“We have talked about doing this forever, and it’s just a really amazing experience to be able to do this together and kind of finally accomplish this dream we’ve had,” Andy Austin said.
“This is our first trip to Sturgis together, and it’s been on our bucket list for about a dozen years now, and so this year everything lined up well, and we were able to do it together,” Dan Austin said. “It’s pretty special.”
The Badlands are also a shared experience for married couple Alan and Sheri Bouffler of Florida.
“It’s like a little mini Grand Canyon,” Alan said. “Didn’t know we had that anywhere else.”
“It’s a whole different experience on a motorcycle compared to being in a vehicle,” Susanna Matulevich of Michigan said.
For Matulevich, the trip to experience these views was a solo experience.
“I have dreamt about doing this my whole life and rode out here by myself from Michigan and came out to just see all the beauty of South Dakota,” she said.
