The sleepy town of Sturgis, South Dakota, wasn’t our planned destination, but one never knows where the road may lead.

My friend, Heather, had never been to South Dakota, a north-central American State rich in beautiful landscape and Native American history, so we planned a road trip to the Black Hills Forest in the southwestern part of the state.

Our timing, as it turned out, would determine our journey. As we headed our car onto the highway heading out of our current home state of Colorado, the 65th annual Sturgis Bike Rally was about to begin. The rally, which attracts motorcycle riders from all over the world, is a weeklong extravaganza in the first full week of August. Live music is offered at most venues, both large and small, and hundreds of vendors funnel into town. Drag races, custom bike contests and exhibition shows are just a few of the events offered. With a few hundred arrests and a few hundred more emergency room visits recorded each year, the rally has a rowdy reputation.

While I didn’t think we’d end up at the rally, I packed an array of black halters, well-worn denim jeans and a bandana, just in case.

We got our first taste of Sturgis while still 2½ hours away. In need of a hotel room, we stopped at Edgemont, population 900. However, there were few rooms to be found, due to its close proximity to the rally, and those with a rare vacancy had hiked up their prices three times the normal rates.

We headed on to Hot Springs, a larger town of 4,000. We had no luck there either, so we opted for plan B – camping.

A sea of motorcycles stand on display for thousands of Sturgis visitors.

The “campground” wasn’t very elaborate — a simple strip of grass that ran through the middle of town. Along one side ran the main street, lined with businesses and a very busy local tavern. The other side offered three churches. We agreed it was a good place to rest, so we parked the car a few spots down from the only other campers present, locked the doors, cracked the windows, and drifted off to sleep to the sounds of loud bar patrons and Warrant, an '80s heavy metal hair band, singing the lyrics “she’s my cherry pie” from a jukebox.

The next morning, after getting ready for the day at a local convenience store and grabbing some tasty, yet nutritionally void “croissanwiches,” we headed north to explore the Black Hills National Forest, one of the area’s most popular destinations. The Black Hills, which appear black from a distance despite its green color, cover an area of 125 miles (20 km) by 65 miles (104 km) and are home to spectacular woodlands, streams, rock formations, lakes and canyons.

When we reached the well-known Mount Rushmore National Memorial, where the 60-foot-high (18 m) high heads of the four American presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln — are carved 500 feet (152 m) above the ground in a wall of granite, I was incredibly relieved I had dressed according to the biker dress code. Instead of the commonly-seen khaki walking shorts, button-down shirts and tennis shoes, there was an onslaught of boots, leather, fringes, black tank tops cut down to there, bandanas and tattoos of every size and subject matter.

On this day, the people-watching was ten times more fascinating than the giant stone faces. The most interesting to me were the bikers. Though appearing a bit intimidating to some, they stopped to pose, like any other tourist, in goofy “presidential” manners in front of the monument.

As we continued through the beautiful and curvy roads of the Black Hills, we often shared the road with motorcycles. I spoke with bikers at every stop, becoming more and more intrigued with the whole rally concept. I took more than my share of photographs for couples who wanted pictures together at scenic stops and learned many personal stories. Later that afternoon, at a stop in Custer State Park – a scenic region containing tall, slender rock formations, caverns and magnificent mile-high views – I met a tall, burly man with a long, graying beard who had been riding nonstop the last few days from Mississippi, which is a distance of nearly 1,400 miles (2240 km). After a bit of small talk I discovered he was surprisingly familiar with my midwestern town of Sedalia, Missouri. We laughed over details that we both recognized from mid-Missouri, and were even able to find a few mutually known people. The world seemed a heck of a lot smaller at that moment.