Bandit,
I couldn’t make the trip out to Sturgis, SD this year, so I did the next best thing. It was early August and I couldn’t just let that slip by without a rally. I attended the East Coast Strugis Rally held the same time as the “Big Sturgis” rally in Little Orleans, Maryland to be exact. It’s only about a 2-hour ride from my house, but of course, I made it a 6-hour ride and squeezed in a Hooters stop on the way. Here’s my report on the rally along with a few pictures:
East Coast Sturgis (ECS) was started 5 years ago by Ken Appel. Ken’s goal was to give us folks on the east coast a place to go and party for a few days in the old school Sturgis way. ECS is located at the Apple Mountain Campground and Ken met his goal of making sure everyone had a good time.
Granted, it’s not Sturgis, South Dakota, but there’s some great roads in the area and it hasn’t gone commercial. Sure there are the usual vendors you’d find at any rally, but the main focus is on having fun and enjoying a few days with old friends and making some new ones. I have to believe this is a lot like the Big Sturgis used to be back in the day. I’m not saying you can experience Big Sturgis by going to ECS, but if you can’t make the trip to South Dakota, this is definitely worth consideration as a place to kill a weekend and a few brain cells.
Ken lined-up bands each day to entertain the crowd. A poker run benefiting the Little Orleans Little League was held on Friday. The local volunteer fire department had all of the beer concessions and sold beer at $2 a can. And, for a finale of sorts, Saturday afternoon included a motorcycle demolition derby, which judging from the pictures on Ken’s website, www.eastcoaststurgis.com , must have been a helluva good time. (I’ll explain how I missed that in a minute.)
The point here is that this rally gives back to the community in specific ways and it was an inspiration for me to buy as much beer as I could consume.
I met up with my riding buddy, Jerry, in Mechanicsburg, PA on Friday. Jerry was riding in from Connecticut on his new 105th Anniversary Ultra Classic Electra Glide and I ran up on my Fatboy from Northern Virginia. Of course, we met at the local Hooters. After a quick lunch we headed down to Little Orleans via the scenic route and got in some good riding in the Pennsylvania hills. We finally made it to Apple Mountain Campground around 6:00 that evening and set up camp.
We spent Friday evening wandering around the campground, listening to the music, eating anything that looked like cholesterol on a stick, and watching many of the ladies earn beads. The campground is like Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras. I have two words for you, titties (wait, that’s one word, but you get my drift.) And as usual, I somehow managed to walk away without a single good tittie picture for you.
On Saturday morning Jerry and I decided to go for a ride to the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, PA. We again took the back roads and most of the morning to ride up, but it was worth the ride. I’ve been trying to get up there for the past couple of years and while it’s a temporary memorial and by memorial standards, not much to look at, it’s a place that honors the bravery and memory of the passengers of Flight 93. These people did more to protect the rest of us from idiotic and idealistic religious fanatics than the Department of Homeland Security will ever do. The message that if you try to take over one of our planes we’ll stand up and fight, even to the death, does more to deter that action than some ridiculous color code terror status.
After spending some time reflecting on the actions of the passengers of Flight 93, we took off in another direction to find the next set of backroads. Our intent was to be back at the campground in time for the Motorcycle Demolition Derby. Unfortunately, a couple of wrong turns (although it’s unfair to call an unplanned route a wrong turn) I managed to dump us into a little town called Manns Choice, PA. This was actually good news, because it was at a crossroads where I could figure out our most direct route back to Apple Mountain. The really good news was that when I pulled off to figure out that route, I happened to notice a little bar about a half a block up the road. We decided a cold beer would do us well in determining our next move.
The bar was called “D’ Hitchin Post”. In addition to $1.25 drafts, they also had fried gizzards. Oh man, this southern boy was in heaven. So, after consuming a modest amount of both identified consumables, we hit the road again and headed for Little Orleans. The only problem was it was already time for the demolition derby by the time we ventured out of D’ Hitchin Post. Oh well, maybe next year.
Saturday night was more of the same. We wandered around the campground checking out the goings on. The Pink Flamingo was hopping. The Pink Flamingo is a set-up that would make the Buffalo Chip Campground proud. This guy has a stage with a dancers pole and all the lights and music to encourage any and every willing female to get up and dance. That place rocks most of the night and is always good for a stop as you’re wandering around.
All in all, it was a fun time. I will definitely go back, if I need something to do in early August next year. Of course, I’d prefer the multi-thousand mile ride, but this was darn good. I highly recommend it to the Bikernet crowd in the east. Go out and check it out.
By the way, I just got back from a ride to Alabama and back, about 2200 miles. I’ll get you a report on that as soon as I can.
–Chuck
criddle123@earthlink.net
