On Friday morning Oct. 2, 2009 ATV riders from Nebraska, Eastern SD, Deadwood, Lead, Spearfish and Belle Fourche started what they called a “Freedom Ride” Border to Border from Nebraska to North Dakota. The ride specifically was to show how much money is spent and the importance of license plates on ATV’s .
The ride started in Ardmore,SD where the riders unloaded their machines, then drove to Nebraska for picture taking and headed to ND and arrived there Sunday PM Oct 5. The ride started with 11 riders the first day, 12 the second and 9 the last day for a total of 13 different riders. That included ages 20 to 82 years of age and of the 13 six of them were women. Seven riders made the entire 350 mile trip.
The first day was a very windy day, the second was beautiful, and the third was cloudy and after loading the ATV’s in North Dakota to return to their homes they ran into rain near the Butte/Harding County line and all but the Nebraska rider woke up to a snow covered ground on Monday morning. The beauty of the fall colors was terrific in the black Hills on Saturday, as one rider described it “It’s to bad everyone can’t see the beauty of the Black Hills from the inside rather than just from the Highways”
Some of the critters encountered were cattle, sheep, elk, deer, turkeys, grouse, Hungarian partridge, and one Mountain lion. Wow what a landscape change between Sturgis and Hoover, SD. from trees to open prairie. And as the one sign near the road read “This is God’s country, don’t drive through it like hell.”
Of coarse we all started to wonder how much money would be spent by the riders and in figuring it up it came to just over $2,300 and that didn’t include much for the towing vehicles, but did include gasoline, lodging, dining, pro rating some license and insurance cost and we used an average of 10 riders for the three days.
This included places like Ardmore, Buffalo, Sturgis, Newell, Hill City, Edgemont, Nemo, and Hoover.
