Like most motorcyclists, I have a bucket list of two-wheeled pilgrimages: the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello, the TT fortnight at the Isle of Man, the North West 200, the Barber Vintage Festival, to name a few. Holy places all. But not every holy place in the motorcycle world is my kind of place. The first to come to mind: the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Too much leather, not enough racing for my tastes. But it takes all kinds for the motorcycle world to go around, right?After spending 36 hours at Sturgis I can legitimately say the 84th edition of the rally was a pilgrimage I’m grateful I got to experience. Why the change of heart? As usual, a motorcycle turned my head and made the experience memorable. This time, a 2024 Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 Special.Harley-Davidson invited me to ride the Pan America off-road in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming to discover a side of Sturgis few ever experience during the rally. I jumped at the opportunity to finally throw a leg over the motorcycle Executive Editor Dawes declared “the best motorcycle The Motor Company has ever produced.”

Harley was hosting me in Deadwood, about 20 minutes west of Sturgis, so I assumed I’d be outside the epicenter of the rally and wouldn’t get much of a taste of it, but after arriving in Rapid City, I quickly realized I was very much mistaken. Sturgis isn’t in Sturgis. It’s everywhere: stretching west into Wyoming and as far east as Mitchell, clear on the other side of the state.

When I arrived in Deadwood, the historic gamblin’ and gold rush town where “Wild Bill” Hickok was killed, it was clear it’s one of many of Sturgis’ epicenters. I wandered out of the parking lot of the hotel/casino where I was staying and headed downtown. For the length of the several blocks of quaint-meets-kitsch bars, souvenir shops, and gambling halls, I was stuck in a throng of people—me practically the only one not wearing a Harley T-shirt—when a trike blaring “Proud to be an American” promenaded down Main Street causing the crowd to erupt in cheers and applause. Across the street, a diabolical custom with a bleeding pentagram and “Make America Hate Again” emblazoned on its tank spelled out a sinister version of the populist slogan. If ever there was an unlikely homebase for an adventure ride, this was it.

There was a lot to take in, but the biggest impression the scene left on me was that Harley-Davidson is selling lots and lots of motorcycles. And many of them, apparently, come to Sturgis. A report from the city estimated that last year the rally brought in about 617,000 visitors, and it was by no means a record year. A 2022 study by Texas AM University estimated that it generated some $784.1 million for the South Dakota economy.With that kind of impact, and with Harley-Davidsons outnumbering every other make of motorcycle in attendance by such a large margin, it’s difficult to distinguish where the cult of Sturgis ends and the culture of Harley-Davidson begins. But the truth is, H-D, like any other vendor at the rally, doesn’t sanction the event, and has no say over what Sturgis is or isn’t. The company is there to connect with its audience and talk about its product.“No one can control the message,” says Paul James, Harley-Davidson public relations manager. “We come in with what we want to talk about: This year, for example, it’s the new touring models. We also know that there are people who are experiencing Pan America for the first time on demo rides. Pan America is one of the top demoed bikes at the rally. You can imagine, it unlocks this experience, unlocks something completely different for people.”And what the Pan America unlocked for me was the quiet side of Sturgis: some 707 miles of unpaved trails open to motorized vehicles across the Black Hills National Forest.

After a rainy morning, the sky cleared and I mounted up a beautiful Alpine Green Pan America 1250 Special equipped with Michelin Anakee Wild knobbies and kitted out with a glut of parts from the Screamin’ Eagle catalog: a titanium exhaust, a quickshifter, 2-inch bar risers, an 11-inch off-road windscreen, a skid plate, and tank pads.Heading out of Deadwood on routes 85 and 14, we made our way onto an unpaved trail to Wyoming. The trail cut through pine forests, which when seen from a distance stood in stark relief against the prairie, an effect that gives the Black Hills its name (derived from the Lakota Paha Sapa, “the hills that are black”). We passed through miles of grassland where cattle grazed in droves, and through sections shaded by sheer rock faces and towering pines. The region’s canyons, rocky spires, and cliffs make it a geological show-off in the midst of the Midwestern flatlands.After sampling the Pan Am’s Off-Road ride mode, I set it in Off-Road Plus to take advantage of its stiffer suspension setting, less intrusive TC, and more immediate throttle response. Straight away, the Pan America impresses with its poise over loose terrain. Which encourages the kind of behavior that makes riding big-bore ADVs off-road such a blast: drifting the rear end through corners, catching a bit of air over small rises, intentionally aiming for messy lines through rocks and washouts.

Only minutes from the bustle of Sturgis, the Pan America enabled me to enjoy the solitude and beauty of the Black Hills while every other motorcyclist in the area was stuck in wheel-to-wheel traffic. Even though the roads are so densely packed during Sturgis, the South Dakota Department of Transportation still lowers the local speed limits for everyone’s safety. In the national forest, there wasn’t a Road Glide or a Boss Hoss trike within miles. Nor were the trails, ordinarily a mecca for off-road riding, crowded with OHVs; I counted just four side-by-sides all day.After a full morning of riding, we made our way to lunch at the Moonshine Gulch Saloon, where dozens of bikers gathered for PBR and burgers. We parked next to a line of gleaming cruisers in front of the saloon. I got off the Pan America, its green paint dulled by a layer of South Dakota dust, while the leather vest and chaps crowd looked on, perhaps not sure what to think despite the Bar Shield prominently displayed across the Pan America’s bodywork.

“Traditional Harley customers are very curious [about the Pan America],” James says. “And many of them were the first purchasers. There’s still a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of people who still don’t know it. It’s kind of flabbergasting sometimes. Even at an event like this, where the bike’s been out for three model years and we talked about it a year ahead of its launch, there are still people who are like, ‘Is that a Harley?’”

A Harley adventure bike was always going to start its life as a novelty. When the Pan America was first shown in prototype form in 2018 it caused a bit of a stir. There were probably skeptics (long since silenced, hopefully) who thought it would be an adventure bike just for Harley people, for those who merely wanted to be able to pull up to a place like the Moonshine Gulch Saloon and be part of the club. But when I strolled into the Gulch with my Mosko Moto jacket slung over my shoulder and my ADV boots creaking with every step, I’m not sure I fit in any more than I would have had I ridden in on a KTM or a BMW. Which is fine by me.But for many people, being part of this monolithic tribe is part of the appeal, especially at a place like Sturgis. It’s all so tied up with identity that the motorcycle can get buried beneath the cultural signifiers piled on top of it. The thing is, Harley-Davidson as a brand transcends the box Sturgis shoves it in. The Pan America is definitive proof of that.

“The brand stretches,” James says. “People like to constrain Harley-Davidson sometimes; even Harley-Davidson likes to constrain Harley-Davidson. I think it wasn’t until the development of LiveWire when we showed the first-gen prototypes. We learned that people gave room to the brand to expand in a way that we didn’t necessarily anticipate. At the same time, we were developing the Revolution Max platform and we felt like what we were learning was telling us that we could make a competitive ADV and people wouldn’t be constrained by thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not a Harley. Harley could never do that.’ It shows the breadth and depth of the brand.”You’ve got to hand it to James and the rest of the marketing team at Harley-Davidson. If they wanted to show just how far the brand stretches—just how much the Pan America is evidence of its elasticity—they couldn’t have gone about it more boldly than by showcasing it in Sturgis, where the social fabric of biker culture is stitched into a one-size-fits-all faded black tee.

Maybe it’s the long-travel suspension, the nearly seven inches of ground clearance, or the general bewilderment caused by a mud-splattered 1,250cc off-road motorcycle, but if the Pan America doesn’t scream “Harley-Davidson” from the very first glance—though it should by the second or third—it’s because it’s doing its job as an adventure bike so well, prioritizing function above all else; cultural signifiers don’t even figure into the equation. For my part, the badge on the tank doesn’t make me like the Pan America any more—or any less. I like it for exactly what it is: a great motorcycle, a great Harley-Davidson.After lunch, we continued through the Black Hills to tackle some rougher terrain. The Pan Am ate it up. At slow speeds, its chassis is well balanced, and at higher speeds it is stable without feeling cumbersome (for reference, its wheelbase is about an inch shorter than the middleweight Ducati DesertX’s). Front-end feel off-road with 50/50 tires is admirable. The electronics are effective. The Revolution 1250 Max engine is smooth-running with robust torque and linear power delivery.“I think we got the product right,” James says.

Since it’s a different category of product than what it’s used to selling, James says Harley-Davidson is focusing on educating its dealers: “We put at least one person at every H-D dealership through RawHyde adventure training. They had to learn to ride a Pan America off-road. We continue that with H-D University training—everything from service training, to sales training, to ways to understand the market. They had to learn how to sell that bike.”The Pan America’s performance merits Harley-Davidson’s commitment to showing it off to ADV riders who may not otherwise consider it. H-D is leaning into the ADV space by supporting the BDR, Get On! ADV fest, and the Super Hooligan series. Immediately following Sturgis, the H-D crew took the fleet of Pan Americas to Touratech DirtDaze in New Hampshire, where, as it happens, one of my teammates from BMW GS Trophy Qualifying took one out for a demo ride. When he got off the bike, the first thing he did was text: “Besides my GS Adventure, it’s the only other bike that has made me smile. So. Much. Power.”When I returned to civilization after a day of riding in the backcountry, I felt grateful the Pan America enabled me to experience the beauty of the Black Hills. But it more than just unlocks a quieter, unpaved side of Sturgis; it hands motorcyclists a clean sheet with which to consider Harley-Davidson. The Pan America quite simply stands on its own two wheels. While the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may not top my list of pilgrimages, I found one thing there that made the entire journey more than worthwhile: a great adventure motorcycle. Maybe that makes Sturgis my kind of place after all. Now all I need is a T-shirt that says as much and I’ll fit right in.

Gear Bag:Helmet: Shoei Hornet X2Jacket: Mosko Moto BasiliskPants: Mosko Moto Kiger Mesh PantBoots: Rev’It Expedition GTX