RAPID CITY, S.D. -- Every summer they swarm over the Black Hills like loud bees, sprung from the cramped nest called Sturgis and searching for a stretch of road where a landscape settled on horseback can be revisited without a windshield intervening.

When the streets of Sturgis fill up at the annual rally, riding gives way to idling. Sturgis is for parking. They get a vista without the numbing blur of billboards and guardrails, they head south, into the Black Hills.

The route winds through hill and pasture, and stretches south to the wonderfully named Wind Cave National Park, and loops back around through Custer State Park and mountainsides that stare north toward Mount Rushmore.

Imagine standing on an ageless mountain and staring into the face of four presidents, then turning to face a bear.

The anticipation builds well east of Sturgis. Along I-80 and I-90, pickup trucks haul campers and trailers loaded with Harleys. In Blue Earth, Minn., population 3,521, John Drummer and his daughter Tiffany, were climbing atop Harleys the size of quarter horses.

"Taught my daughter how to ride bikes," he drawled. "We're gonna take her out and put her in the hills."

Gonna put her in the hills.

It sounds like a declaration of some pioneer about to settle amid buffalo and brown bear. If the west was settled on a horse, it is now revisited on a motor strapped between two wheels.

It is a journey amid bear-sized men, a mixture of Hell's Angel and retired accountant, "living the American dream." At least that's how C.J. Williams, a retiree who rode up from Clovis, N.M., sees it.

We came across Mr. Williams and his companions on a mountainside just south of one of several single-lane tunnels that straddle the mountainsides, keeping out the otherwise ubiquitous Winnebago campers. The family van just made it through. Motorcycles breeze through the passage.

Mr. Williams has a son in Florida and that state is home to its own cycle rally -- the annual confab in Daytona.

"Once you get there you kind of have to park your motorcycle because it's just so crowded," Mr. Williams said.

In the hundred-mile circuit of two-lane roads encircling Custer and Rushmore, the riding is unobstructed. We saw bikers puttering at idle next to buffalo, and slowly coursing through a stand of wild donkeys. A family of deer blinked back at men in leather vests, each clearly wondering how the other got there.

"After you come here you really don't want to go anywhere else," said Tom Mills, who was traveling with Mr. Williams. "We can see for 50-60 miles straight."

Many of those views are of Rushmore.

Others are of a series of vertical rock formations, pushed from volcanic earth and worn sharp by the wind. Locals call them "The Needles."

Bikers clambered up the sides of one formation that hugs a two-lane road. Sound systems -- I will never get used to the idea of CD player on a Harley -- blasted out the Allman Brothers. A few shouted to each other from the rocky peaks.

This, by the way, is a far cry from Sturgis or nearby Belle Fourche. I stayed in the latter town a year earlier, camping at a weedy little campground and eating bar food in the nearby downtown. Sturgis pretty much turns into a giant parking lot and Belle Fourche offered a little more room to move around. The town fathers shut off a main street, put a band on the stage, and rocked into the night.

This year the family camped at a motel in Rapid City. The manager ticked off his predictions as to how many folks would be popped for drugs, public drunkenness or prostitution.

Arrests, in fact, were down from the preceding year. A total of 183 people got themselves jammed up with the law.

Most arrests involved drunk driving -- or biking -- and drug arrests had fallen from the year before

It was at the motel that the manager gave us advice on how best to see Rushmore. His theory involved not paying the $10 parking fee. It was that route, through Custer, that introduced a family in a van to retirees on Harleys and the occasional custom-made bike.

At drive's end we paid the fee at Rushmore anyway. So did many of the bikers. Everybody hiked the mountainside to get a look at Gutzon Borglum's giant sculpture, hewn out of the same driven self-confidence that inspires men and women to strap their legs across an engine and hurtle through the echoing hills.