I thought I would add some more pics now. Work and the kids school has kept me busy.

Sunday

Whew, we are finally back home. It was a great trip, but a long trip as well. In 10 days we rode 3,566 miles total. We were in 7 different states, 3 time zones and who knows how many hours on the bike. During the travel days I found that it is hard to hear things after spending 10 hours on a bike on the Interstates.

Did we enjoy the trip, hell yes. Would we do it again, of course, but we do have different ideas for the next time. Take a camper and spend time at one of the major campgrounds, ride during the day and enjoy concerts and friends company in the evening without having to drive anywhere to get some sleep. That won't be for a few years so we have time to think about it.

We took over 400 pictures, I'll try to upload a few more in the next couple days, I have to go back to work of course.

Til I get some pictures sorted out, take it easy.

Saturday

We are now in Peru,IL. Not a bad day, even though it was only 400+ miles today the days seem longer than that. After so many miles they just blend together and get longer and longer. Anyone who says it is a breeze to do this many miles is either lying or riding a couch on wheels, right Sheep Lovin Bastard!

I guess thats about it for now, the next update will be from home with final milage and thoughts.
This was taken on Main St. in Sturgis mid afternoon Wed.

Take it easy.

Friday

We are now in Minnesota, not much different than Iowa, smells like cow.

Yesterday we started out the day with a trip to main st Sturgis, picked up a couple of items then stopped by the UPS store to ship some stuff home. Then we headed up the street to view some of the custom bikes on display. Nice bikes but not for the money they were asking, average was $35K. It was 98 degrees, we stepped into a China buffet mainly for the A/C but some food too. After getting refreshed and stuffed we headed out of town to see the Full Throttle Saloon, they claim to be the biggest biker bar in the country, I believe it. They have a main bar area, then behind it there is a circle of buildings and walkways in about a 100 yard diameter circle. We continued further from town, passed Glencoe and the famous Buffalo Chip Campgrounds, from what people say about it we thought it would be much larger, absolutely no shade as it is a pasture when not being used for the rally. We saw Bear Butte mountain and stopped at the new Broken Spoke saloon on highway 79, kinda cool as they have you ride through the bar to get to the parking lot, sorry, bikes only go through the bar. We ended up again in Deadwood for the evening of people watching. We have a good story to tell but I won't describe it on the Inet, if you want to hear it ask any of us. We headed back to the house to pack.

Today, no big events except covering 500+ miles to end up in Fairmount, MN. Tomorrow is an easier day with us ending up in Peru, IL. Hopefully it won't be as hot as it was today.

Take it easy.

Thursday

What a great trip so far, we have accomlished everything on our list to see and still have today to go. Tuesday our friends from Chardon got to the house around 0830 and we headed out for spearfish canyon. I can't say too much about the scenery except for what I've seen from the pictures T took, but the ride was great. It was warm in the sun and chilly in the shade but the twisties and road conditions were great. The ride was excellent all in all through the canyon and the pickup driver behind us was a very cooperative/understanding driver, he kept his distance and never crowded us. Then we headed out to Wyoming and devil's tower, that is a sight to see. We didn't pay to enter the park but didn't need to as the gift shop we stopped at was just below the tower. Some great pics of that was taken as well. We took a back road back to Sturgis but on these backroads the speed limit was 65 and we made good time. Through a couple small towns, ya know the kind with a population of say 18. Pretty damn small, except for this week as there are bikes in everytown, gas station, bar, eatem up joint, pulloff areas and so forth. A couple of the towns had main street (ok their only through streets) filled with bikes parked on both sides. The scenery on the ride home was well, I now know why exactly they call this area the plains, :-). We headed into Sturigs, parked off main street and walked Main street and Lazelle street. Alot of vendors and bikes and interesting people, very crowded. We did some souviner shopping and ate dinner (fair food) and people watched. Looked at some custom bikes and some custom people too. We stopped at the Knuckle saloon and sat on the balcony to take a break and have a cool drink, temp was 95 degrees. On our way out of town say around 6pm the traffic to get into town was unbareable, good thing we were heading the other direction. The backup was probably about 1 -1.5 miles. We headed into Deadwood to grab another bite to eat, yea I was still hungry for some regular food. We sat in a joint called Mustang Sally's and ate and people watched again and just relax.

Yesterday we headed out for the Crazy Horse memorial, same route we took to Custer park. While talking with our host that morning she told T about a shooting that happened Tue night down in Custer state park, seems that one MC got into it with another group of people and there ended up being either 7 or 8 people hurt. That is 40+ miles away from us, we know where to go and when to leave certain places so all in all not a problem for us, just interesting to hear about. Ok, so we headed down to Crazy Horse, nice leasurely ride, no major things to talk about, nice scenery and nice roads, crowded but not over crowded. While we stopped for a break there was this girl on a sporty who couldn't get it started, they pushed it next to our bike. She tried it again and it fired up, one guy told here "hey don't worry about it, we all drop them at one time or another". Here after she filled up the tank she lost her balance and over the bike went. One reason to always fill your tank while its on the stand, I see alot of people fill them up while sitting on them. So into Crazy Horse we go, $5 per person gets you in. They were raffling off a bike there, nice custom job, for $200 you got 12 tickets and could go to the top of the mountain. I couldn't see spending that kind of money for a chance to win a bike and a trip to the top. We walked the museum and looked at the interesting facts, like since this all started (by one man) they have removed over 8.5 million tons of rock. They do not accept any assistance from the government for the monument, it is all private donations and what they make on the site. We saw them blast some of the rock, the pictures came out better than expected, instead of just seeing clouds of dust you can actually see pieces of rock flying away. We ate lunch in their reasturant, did more shopping then headed back to Deadwood to meet up with our friends. On the way back we were racing to stay in front of a storm which we did and didn't get wet. After we got back our friends were in Rapid City with their relatives at an animal zoo like place. T and I decided to head over to Rapid City Harley to see what was there. While there we ran into our friends C&C, we hung out while he got a new bulb, one of his burned out. We then headed back towards Sturgis, stopping about 16 miles east of it to see some custom builders displays, we found a display from Leroy Thompson out of Mentor, the are over by the post office. Talked with one of the guys breifly then we headed across I-90 for dinner. Had a good meal at a very crowded place, Elks landing or something like that, this place looks to be the banquet hall, Lions meeting place and so forth the rest of the year but was full of people eating during the rally. You guessed it, we headed back to Deadwood afterwards, just relaxed and watched C&C try their hands at the slots. They ended up wining $2.25, I figured that at least for me gambling is just a form of entertainment, not a way to make money. hehehe

Today is a day to prepare things for the trip home and just do whatever. The other couple from Missouri here left on Wed and now there is another couple from Colorado here, their bikes were in the garage when we got here last night. People coming and going all the time. Well, I should run to the campground and get this update loaded then get back here to the house to get things together to ship home, no way we can carry everything on the bike.

Take it easy.

Tuesday

Hello, I found interent connectivity, actually two, this is from our hosts home on their system and where one of them works has connectivity. Its better than our cell phone coverage, which is best only in two towns so far. If you need to get a hold of us leave a voice mail and we'll return the call when possible.

On to the update, no pics this time as they are on my laptop. We spent Sunday night in Deadwood taking in the sites and getting some dinner. Basically Deadwood is all about gambling, thats pretty much main street with some souviner shops thrown in. It was back to the house for relaxation and planning. Our hosts are great people, they have opened their house to complete strangers (another couple from Missouri is here as well) given us a house key and ensured we feel at home.

Monday we ventured out, at first I thought we might be leaking oil but after stopping at a shop and borrowing some tools I have traveling hint #1 for bikers, before you leave ensure you clean your air cleaner as part of your maintenance, ops I forgot that. Back on the road we headed to Mt. Rushmore, nice site to see, some of the pics we have are very good of it. Then we pressed on to a stretch of road called Needles Highway, lost of twisties and switchbacks, some wooden bridges and tunnels carved out of the rocks. Mostly one lane tunnels very thin, sometimes you have to wait your turn sometimes you luck out. We did pass some mountain goats and one buffalo, again we got pictures of those too. This road passes through Custer state park. We headed back to Lead by way of Hill City, it started to rain and we forgot to pack the rain gear, so we pulled over (with about 100 other bikes) and waited a bit. When it looked to be good we headed out again, only to get 5 miles up the road and the cops shut the road down to bikes. Amazing site to see 75+ bikes all sitting in the slow lane of the road and the cops waving the cars on through. They opened it up in about 10 minutes time to find out that the road was pretty slick, everyone took it easy and got through ok. We headed into Deadwood again to meet up with our friends from Chardon, who were in Sturgis with relatives. Had some dinner, did some people/bike watching and them do our share of gambling, went as usual, T won and K lost.

Today we are heading to Spearfish canyon and Devil's Tower then on into Sturgis.

It is amazing, the number of bikes, its like you are on a 24 hour run or something, sometimes you can be all by yourself but it doesn't last long. Yesterday we ended up on a highway in a pack of about 60 bikes, of course you have your a**holes like the one in a Grand Marqui who couldn't deal with following people, passed all 60 bikes in one fail swoop during passing lanes and no passing lanes. He'll be a memory soon if he keeps that kind of driving up. We do have some excellent shots of all the bikes and I'll post a couple when I can.

This is a mecca for bikers, that much I can now atest to. For the most part the people who live here seem to handle this influx very well. Imagine your small hometown area (say Ashtabula county) getting over 600,000 visitors, estimated 400,000 bikes) in a two week time span. Thats it for today, we need to finish getting ready to head out.

Take it easy.

5 Aug 06

Day two has been completed, we are sitting around with a couple of beers discussing our plans for tomorrow. Not a bad day today, shorter in the milage area, 460 miles down today. That puts us at 1090 total for the last two days. It started early but thats what we wanted, we pulled out about 0800, got about 40 miles and pulled over to put the raingear on, as we finished putting it on the rain started. We slowed down and took it easy for the next 150 mile while it rained. T thinks the Iowa should be called the "Cow Poop" state, it just reaks of the stuff.

On I-29 heading north into SD.

The rain stopped and so did we to get the gear off as the temps quickly rose to 90+. The wind picked up a bit and was making the ride more interesting. T thinks that Iowa should be called the "Cow Poop" state, it has areas that just stink.

We say trickles of bikes starting in Ohio, but once we hit I-29 things starting picking up, once we hit I-90 in Souix Falls and now here in Mitchell, there are bikes everywhere. It is great. No major items today, one question, if you buy an Electra Glide (Harley touring bike) why is it on a freakin trailer? See that quite a bit so far.

Take it easy.