Exploring the Other Side of Sturgis – on a Pan America

There’s more to Sturgis than cruisers and concrete

If you’ve never had the pleasure of riding in the Black Hills of South Dakota you’re missing out on some of the best roads the United States has to offer. The rolling hills are tattooed with hundreds of miles of two lane black top connecting the state’s constellation of scenic views. Needles Highway, Spearfish Canyon, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, Iron Mountain, Mt. Rushmore… the list is endless and the roads are mostly empty… for fifty weeks of the year. During those other two weeks, Sturgis, a town of roughly 7,000 people, transforms into the epicenter of cruiser culture in America. Anywhere from 300,000 to a record 747,000 motorcyclists make their pilgrimage to the Black Hills for one of the largest motorcycle events on earth: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

While I’ve spent plenty of time in South Dakota on two wheels, I’ve always steered away from the Rally to avoid the crowds. This year I didn’t have a choice. Thanks to my new job (gratuitous shoutout to Quad Lock), I’d be spending twelve days in South Dakota to support our marketing efforts at the 84th annual rally. Though my primary focus was installing phone mounts, I was afforded one reprieve from my marketing duties: The Pan America Owners Ride.

Despite its name, the “Sturgis” Motorcycle Rally has three main hubs: Rapid City, Sturgis, and Deadwood. I was stationed in Rapid City for the entire event and despite it being the ‘quiet’ part of the rally, attendance was staggering. As much as I looked forward to the day of riding, at the back of my mind I prepared myself for the disappointment of getting stuck behind a sea of bikes in every direction, ironically, mostly Harley-Davidsons.

After launching the Pan America in 2021, the Bar and Shield wanted to foster a sense of community with its new corral of adventure riders, especially the inseam-challenged converts successfully lured by the optional adaptive ride height feature. For the last three years, Harley-Davidson has hit the road with a fleet of Pan Ams and support vehicles for what they call the “Pan America Adventure Tour,” where you can demo bikes and meet other owners at various ADV events all over the United States. While the official owners' ride was technically the day before, Harley wanted to show us the kind of adventures they shared with the thirty plus participants that signed up for the experience. We were in for a treat.

After a very soggy ride to Deadwood from my base camp in Rapid City, the skies cleared and my spirits lifted as the H-D team began setting up our bikes. I was matched with a very sharp looking Pan America Special in Alpine Green, specced with the optional adaptive ride height, quick shifter, tall risers, touring windscreen, and tubeless spoked wheels. I was pretty skeptical as to how much off-road riding we were going to get, but seeing every bike adorned in Michelin Anakee Wilds was a sign of good things to come. I won’t be doing a deep dive or technical review on the bike for this story, but if you want some more info, Ryan Adams has you covered.

Pulling out of the parking lot onto Lower Main St, it became immediately apparent our group stuck out like a sore thumb. Helmets, MX boots, and hydration bladders are probably the three least common pieces of kit you’ll see at the rally, but this didn’t deter our fellow bikers from returning “the wave” whenever prompted. The riding congestion in Deadwood during the rally is no joke and the adaptive ride height made for light work of the constant start/stop as we marched our way out of town. My initial doubts started to creep back in about the surge but thankfully traffic thinned out very quickly as we made our way west. Sticking to pavement? Better wake up early to avoid the crowds.

Once we finally had some breathing room on Highway 14, I popped the Pan America into sport mode to see what all of the fuss was about with the Revolution Max engine. Rest assured, this thing scoots. Harley did a great job with the baseline electronic suspension settings in each riding mode to match how relaxing or exciting you want the ride to be, and the quick shifter was a treat when paired to the 150-horsepower mill, albeit a bit clunky between first and second gear on upshifts. Unless we were really pushing in the twisties, I much preferred the soft suspension settings in Road mode over the firm suspension in Sport, and could combine all the parameters of each mode to my liking in one of the custom ride modes had I taken the time to do so. The clever electronic suspension constantly monitors sag regardless of mode so you don’t worry about having to break out the tools and adjust your preload when adding luggage or a pillion. When I adventure ride, I like to set up camp and then hit some more challenging terrain with the bike unloaded, so this is a big time saver for me.

Our first jaunt in the dirt was perfect for getting my sea legs on the Pan America. We ditched the tarmac onto Roughrock Falls Rd for a few miles of beautifully graded gravel. I couldn’t help but think to myself these are the perfect sorts of roads for new ADV riders to get a feel for loss of traction (should they be so inclined) with low stakes and staggering views of surrounding rock faces. Slowly these graded roads turned into flowy two-track with plenty of easy lines as we closed in on the Cement Ridge Fire Lookout. The tower in its current state is staffed by fire watch Barb Peterson, who was kind enough to take us up for a tour and explain the basics of how they spot and triangulate fires in the Black Hills. Her dog wasn’t very good at spotting fires, but excellent at sourcing belly rubs. After a few snacks and another photo stop we headed back down Gudinger Rd in search of more views and lunch.

The flowy two-track turned back into well groomed gravel for our second leg of the day, constantly spitting us out from dense tree lines into open fields with long sweeping corners. After our first stop I changed to the Off-Road+ mode which disables ABS in the rear and offers a much lower level of intervention from the traction control. If you like to pick up the pace, drift through corners, or wear out other peoples tires, I highly recommend it. As an added bonus, this stiffens up the suspension should you decide to take flight. If this were my personal bike, I would have used one of the custom rider modes to essentially duplicate these exact settings but with the reduced power map. 150 hp is a lot of fun, but pretty unnecessary in the dirt.

With the last photo stop out of our way, we continued onwards towards Rochford to grab lunch at the Moonshine Gulch Saloon. After seeing only one side-by-side and three cars in the last fifty miles of off-road riding, we were plopped into the busiest one-intersection town imaginable. Rochford was absolutely teeming with motorcyclists, almost exclusively on touring-frame H-Ds. As we parked our towering adventure bikes in front of the Saloon, I couldn’t help but feel the stares of the dozen or so riders taking a break on the front porch. During the first week of the rally while I was in Rapid City, any mention I made to customers about my upcoming ride was often met with skepticism or absolute disregard for the Pan America, so I braced for the worst. To my surprise, the riders in Rochford kindly introduced themselves and asked us tons of questions. Maybe it’s because our bikes were filthy and it helped them visualize the true versatility of the Pan Ams, or perhaps they watched the 5-foot-4-inch Staci, from “Ride to Food,” climb down from a deceptively low saddle right next to me, and they had to know more. Many couldn’t believe it was even a Harley-Davidson, but that interaction gave me a lot more hope than despair about the future of H-D owners and their place in the adventure segment.

With our bellies full of food it was time to make a decision. The group was going to split to accommodate the variety of skill level between the five of us and I had a choice to make; get back early on more well-groomed fire roads and get a good night's sleep, or the longer, “spicy” route back to Deadwood. Our guides Justin and Paul made a pretty compelling pitch and we made the split a few miles later at Forest Service Road 256. I opted for some spice.

Once again, we found ourselves on well-traveled fire roads, but slowly the size of the aggregate got larger and larger, with more embedded rocks and G-outs littering our path. For a while our pace seemed to increase with the level of difficulty as more and more giggles were shared between our Cardos. Small puddles turned into water crossings and the best part of this section was a one mile steep, technical climb littered with loose shale and a high crown in the center. Like all good obstacles, this climb ended with a dream ramp to really air out the Pan America and see how it handled the sudden altitude change. Am I hucking it like a dirt bike? No. Does it land with more composure than a 550 lbs motorcycle should? Absolutely. The trail really mellowed out after this point and we rejoined parts of the South Dakota BDR-X on our way back to Deadwood with a dirty grin plastered under my helmet.

The second we turned onto Highway 385 all I could do was look in my rear view mirrors at the plume of dust we left behind. By this point we were closing in on five pm and the realities of a few hundred thousand people riding motorcycles in the same place had really set in. Highway 385 is a blast when empty but it felt more like a funeral procession during our return to Deadwood. All good things must come to an end, I suppose. It was during this particularly speed-limit-abiding portion of the ride that I was able to take some time and reflect on the trip.

When I think back on all twelve days at my first Sturgis Motorcycle Rally it’s not going to be about steak tips, the Buffalo Chip, or the guy that tried to convince me full-face helmets weren’t any safer than half-helmets for twenty minutes. It’s going to be about the absolute joy and playfulness I got to experience while exploring over a hundred miles of the Black Hills off-road while hardly encountering another soul. There is so much more to the Rally than pavement, and I’m not sure there is a better time to get off the beaten path. I’ve had the pleasure of riding off-road in South Dakota a few times in the last three years, but always with a healthy dose of caution of rental side-by-sides and heavy trail traffic. I couldn’t believe how empty these same trails were during our ride. One of the many beauties of adventure riding is getting to explore the path less taken. At the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally this couldn’t be any more true.

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