8-10-12 Day 14 Danville, IL to Somerset, PA

Got up to a cloudy, cool & damp morning. The weather was for scattered showers left over from the front that went through last night but had moved east and from the radar appeared as if we'd most likely catch up to it. We left just after 7 but 2 minutes up the road we crossed the time zone so it was just after 8 already! The posted speed limits on most of this trip have generally been 70 or 75 except when you come through a city/town they may drop to 60/65. However, most folks are going 75/80 and that was what we traveled at for the most part just to go with the flow. We generally run between 160 - 200 miles on a tank. Today being the 3rd day in a row of putting on mileage, everyone was feeling the grind and folks were looking for a stop at about 134. The next leg only got to 120 with lunch, then 126 and the last leg was 124. I had one GPS issue as we came into Indianapolis that made us do a reroute through local streets within a part of the city but I blame the construction zone that may have rerouted the location of the highway intersection. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!!! We had 2 delays due to roadwork that added an hour to our time on the road. We had some very light rain off & on and at the 1st gas stop, half of us put rain gear on. I chose to go with chaps and a light jacket. The radar showed us that we would be running perpendicually into a long band of showers. Well that band kept moving east just in front of us, an amazingly we never caught it. By the time we stopped for lunch it had warmed up quite a bit and was in the mid/upper 80's. After lunch most of us took off our jackets but kept chaps/rain pants on as the radar still showed that band of showers. This was the leg that had about a 40 minute delay for road work as the merge down to one lane ended up to be over 6 miles long!!!!! We had time to get off the bike grab a water as it was hot and most of us took off our upper rain gear/jackets . Once through we finally ended up catching up to the rain which is what prompted our next gas stop. We spent about 15 minutes fueling up/bathrooms/snacks/water/etc. In that time the sun came out and things were drying but we knew we'd drive right back into it. A couple folks put the rain gear back on but some of us just left our pants/chaps on and said screw it as it was hot and we could see on the radar that we could as Tom always says "DRIVE THROUGH IT".We took off and in about 10 minutes we came back into it and for about 20 - 30 minutes we rode through it with some fairly heavy rain for the last 10 minutes. The sun was out in front of the showers and we knew we had to keep moving and get to the hotel before it caught us again which we were able to do and about 20 minutes after we arrived came the rain. Tonights hotel was a Holiday Inn Express and it was brand new. It was so new that they were still wallpapering the lobby, as well as the pool wasn't open yet and they hadn't put the mini refrigerators in the room!!! So happy hour was just in our room today! Tommorrow is the final leg home for most of us except Mike & Annie will be splitting off near Hershey, PA to visit their kids/grandkids for an extra day,

8-9-12 Day 13 Council Bluffs, IA to Danville, IL

Got up to a cool grey day, about 60 degrees and basically like a heavy mist/fog. Left the hotel around 7am and went west on 80. Had a long sleeve shirt & a sweatshirt on and was comfortable. The radar showed random showers/thunderstorms possible. The weather stayed the same through IA and as we crossed the Mississippi River it was as if someone turned a switch and on, as on the east side the sun was out and it was in the upper 80's! We stopped for gas & lunch in a little town called Andover, IL. After lunch we continued on 80W. The radar showed we would be running into showers and sure enough about a 1/2 hour down the road we saw the sky turn dark and a wall of water that we were heading into. We pulled over and put on the rain gear. We took back off and 5 minutes later the rains were over and we are now cooking in our suits but the radar still shows showers all around. After about 30 minutes we are dying in the hot weather with our gear on so we pull into a rest area and most of us take the suits off. We lucked out as for the next 150 miles we could see the rain immediately to our left as shown in the following pics. If the road had been 150 - 200 yards North we would of been soaked!!!!

we could see the wall of water coming down!

We pulled into the hotel about 5 pm with dark skys all around and a few minutes later it started to rain! The hotel let us keep the bikes under the canopy! Today was about a 520 mile day and I've turned slightly over 4000 miles since I left. After our daily combo pool/cocktail hour we grabbed a taxi to go to dinner cause it was still raining. Danville is right at the border of IL & IN. We had been given a dinner recommendation to go to the I & I Stateline Tavern which is right on the border hence the name. They claim some peoples phone will switch between time zones! The food was awesome. At this point we're basically half way home. Weather looks touch & go for tomorrow. One thing I have failed to mention is what we've all been hearing about the drought out west. Well we can attest to the severity. All the corn we've seen in WI, MN, SD & most of Iowa is brown and the cattle watering holes are either dry or very close to dry. We saw a fence crew taking the oppurtunity of fixing fences along I-90 in the areas that are usually underwater! Things were not so bad through the east end of IA & IL and heading east from there.

8-8-12 day 12 Rapid City to Council Bluffs, IA

We had breakfast at the hotel and got on the road about 7 am after saying our goodbyes to Doreen who is catching a flight back about 11. We headed out on 90E crossing the Missouri river back the way we had come until Sioux Falls and then in order to take a different route, we took 29S toward Sioux City to 80E just outside of Omaha,NB on the east side of the Missouri River and called it a day in Council Bluffs, Iowa. We can see downtown Omaha as it's just across the river. We rode three legs of around 2-1/2 hrs and roughly 170/180 miles each with lunch after the second leg just south of Sioux Falls. Tally for the day was 520 miles. The temp got up to about 95 on the last leg and we lucked out as the clouds got dark as we pulled into the hotel about 5 pm, checked in, unpacked and went to the pool to cool off the sky's opened up as a thunderstorm came through. 15 minutes later we had a rainbow! Our hotel is in the convention center district and there's a few casinos & riverboat casino here. Our hotel looks at Binion's casino so we walked across the street and went to the buffet with some 2for1 coupons Sue & Mark found out about. Tomorrow's plan is similar to today to get another 500ish miles in. One last note to remind you to keep your focus while riding. Around 12:30 pm today on I-90E about 10 miles before the turn off to 29S we came upon Sheriffs flashing lights, the right lane closed and a sign saying accident scene ahead. This went on for several miles with Sheriffs stationed about every 1/3 of a mile until we saw a car carrier with a badly mangled Harley Electra Glide laying sideways on the bed. Smurph just googled to look up any news about it and found the news story that the operator lost control and crashed, no other vehicles involved, 1 person was pronounced dead at the scene and the other is in critical condition.

8-7-12 Day 11 DearFish Canyon & Full Throttle Saloon

Today we planned an easy day so that we can get back to the hotel and get ready for tomorrows departure. We left the hotel about 8ish and took 44W out of Rapid to 385N to 14A which is the Spearfish Canyon scenic byway and goes through the town of Lead. Today I shot GoPro video of Spearfish canyon so I don't have any pics and still haven't figured the video posting thing out. 14A brings you back to 90 which we took east to go through Deadwood again to look around a little more but the town was so busy that we blew it off and decided to go have lunch at the Full Throttle Saloon. This place is unique as it basically mostly an outdoor mega-bar. They claim it's the worlds largest biker bar. From the look of the parking lot we expected the place to be mobbed as we parked a long ways away with what I thought had to be 5000 bikes. Amazingly it wasn't that crowded and could easily have twice the crowd. They have vendors set up throughout the place (I bought a carbon fibre half helmet) as well as bands playing, several food courts, and different games/contests going on. They have all kinds of vehicles scattered around including school buses planted vertically, another bus cut horizontally at the window level and sunk in for an ice cold beer bar, semi trucks up on poles and motorcycles all around, some hanging, some up on shelves. They have 2 thunderdromes (motorcycles in a cage). The only pics I have is of the huge bike sculpture they have out front by the entrance.

Closeup to see the detail

We left there about 3 and headed back towards the hotel. Smurph stopped at Black Hills Harley again to get a new helmet headset. Steve/Sue went into Rapid to do some shopping. the rest of us either did laundry, made some blog entries, finished up some shopping and began packing up. We went out for dinner about 8:30 and are planning a 6:45 departure to start heading east.

Day 10 Monday 8-6-12 Whatever!!

Today is a do your own thing day. Smurph left early to be first at the Vance & Hines tent in Sturgis to get true duals installed after he had visited the tent the day before and decided later in the day he'd do it. Of course when he got there they were out of them for his bike but had them back at the Black Hills Harley Dealer vendor tent area which he went right by on his way to Sturgis and could've saved 50 miles but more importantly time as now there were 5 bikes in front of him! He got back to the hotel about 12:30. Mark & Doreen went straight to Black Hills and got a Mustang seat for thier bike and also got back about 12:30. The rest of us slept in, did laundry, and I got 2 days worth of blogging caught up. Around 1, Mike/Annie & Mark/Doreen went for a ride to the Badlands National Park/Wall drug again as Doreen hadn"t been with us then. Steve/Sue/Smurph & I went for a ride on the wilderness loop on the south end of Custer State park. The nice part of this is that you can take Iron Mountain Road and Needles highway to get there!!! Unfortunately today there was a huge increase in the number of bikes compared to Saturday and it was pathetically slow going! Not the ride I was hoping for but still the scenery is magnificent. It was brutally hot again, like about 104, and there wasn't much wildlife out to see. We did see a single buffalo near the road, a bunch of mules eating evrything in site that people stopped to feed them, even though your not supposed to (SUE!!). Picture is not of Sue. We also saw what I think is an antelope.

Sue said she saw a herd of buffalo up in the tree line that I missed. We also came upon a sporster that didn't negotiate a turn and folks were pulling it out of the ditch. It appeared that no one got hurt (other than someones ego when hundreds of folks see you). We stopped for me to get water several times as I was getting dehydrated and felt it. On the way back we got diverted off 16 due to an accident that we could just see up the road that appeared to be bikes. In this mornings paper I read that 3 folks have died in bike accidents (not the one we saw) and 2 were due to speed & alcohol and the 3rd didn't negotiate a turn so that was probably speed or poor ability. You have to pay attention here as the scenery is breathtaking and the roads are twisty. We got back a little after 6 and went straight for the pool. Mark/Doreen & Mike/Annie got back around 7ish and joined us at the pool for cocktails. About 9:00 we walked down the street to a Texas Road House for dinner. Tomorrow were going to ride up to Spearfish area and do the canyon.

8-5-12 Day 9 STURGIS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was check out Sturgis day for all of us for the first time. This is probably the largest motorcycle rally. Basically a huge congregation of bikes/bikers of every type/size/color you can imagine and then some! The downtown exists for this one purpose and is set up/geared up to take it in stride. There are set rules that are enforced such as speed limits, coming to a complete stop and putting both feet down at all stop signs and parking in designated areas that are plentiful. This is a seasonal place so most of the help are part-timers but they do it year after year. There are a bazillion souvenir shops all selling "offically licensed merchandise" although not sure how many "officials" are doing the licensing!! Here's a couple shots on Main St.

You can get anything related to motorcycling here in mass quantities. Every manufacturer/seller/reseller is here in a big way. Seems like Hot Leathers has the bulk of the shops. One of the best shirts I saw was "I rode mine to trailer week". My guess is that 50-60% of the bikes here are trailered which I am of the opinion is BS. Of course some of the custom bikes you wouldn't wanna ride more then 10 miles on. There are tons of tatoo artists/shops as well and a lot folks showing thier tatoos as well lots that shouldn't!!! For the most part there are not a lot of very young people. It takes money to have a nice bike and travel. Lots of 30 something and up folks and lots of couples where both ride thier own bikes and tons of 2ups. Went through the biker build off tent and saw some neat bikes like these. Old School

8-4-12 Day 8 Jewell Cave & More!

Another great weather day. We left the hotel about 7:50, gassed up and took 16 south back to Jewell Cave and arrived about 9:10. The cave tour is 80 minutes and there are 741 steps so most of us brought sneakers to change into. They take you down an elevator about 300 feet and then you walk on a path of aluminum grating & stairs in between concrete walks. Pretty impressive contract it most of been to build the walkway and install the elevators. Jewell cave has currently mapped out about 162 miles of cave (and still mapping) making it the 2nd largest in the US behind Mammouth cave (over 400 miles)in KY. It is the coolest cave in the US, literally as it stays a constant 49 degrees compared to Mammouth that is 53. (One of the National Park service tour guides corny jokes)

Flow Stone formation nicknamed Jaba the Hut!

From here we kept going west on 16 to Newcastle, Wyoming and had coffee, then turned north on 85 to 585 into Sundance, WY and decided to stop for lunch. There was a Harley shop so we stopped in to ask for a recommendation and they told us to go right next door. Well it turned out to be a mistake. It wasn't that busy but somehow our section got left on ignore when they changed waitresses. The menu was very limited but interesting so we figured anything would be good. Well we finally got drinks and put our order in. People coming in after us got served thier food and we're still waiting. At the 1 hour mark I told the waitress she had 3 minutes to get the food or I was leaving. This is after she assured us several times it would be right out. About 5 minutes later 3 orders come out, mine first! The sandwich was fine but the skinon fries were cold! In a few minutes 3 more dinners come out and also had cold fries. Sue had ordered a side of fries and a few minutes later hers came out fresh & hot. At this point Anne asks what happened to her lunch, which was just a side salad, that caught the waitress off guard. I guess that was also due to the change in waitress even though she was the one that took all the food orders! Probably spent (wasted) 2 hours in this town that was most unmemorable! Left about 2:30 and headed on 90W for 1 exit to 14N to 24N and to Devil's Tower! This is quite the site. It rises 1280 feet above the adjacent river.

There are quite a few rock climbers that scale this place. The climbs average about 4 to 600 feet depending which route you take. We saw a least 10 people in process and several more preping for thier climb the next morning. Take a look at the pics of one descending and then a wide angle of him as a dot just to the right of the left tree.

From Devils Tower we headed in reverse back onto 90E and into Deadwood, SD. This town was busy as it is the only town in SD that has full gambling as everywhere else is just video machines. It is basically restaurants/bars/casinos. Walked around for a bit to say we'd been there and headed back to Rapid to get dinner. By now it was well past 9 pm so we opted to walk up the street to a nice place and had a few drinks & dinner. We got back to the hotel about 11:30 had a night cap and called it a day. Plan is to scope out Sturgis in the AM as we have passes to the Buffalo Chip for the Zac Brown show tomorrow evening.

8-3-12 Day 7 Exploring Attractions south of Rapid City

Been a bunch of long action packed days so I've fallen behind in my posts. Trying to get caught up a little today. Friday we got up to another sunny day. Temp was about 62 when we headed out at 8 am to gas & go. Todays plan was to do a loop that hit the attractions south of Rapid City. We headed down 16 south out of Rapid toward Mt. Rushmore about 30 miles away. Once you get near the Town of Keystone you get onto 16A which is called Iron Mountain Road! This is probably the best road I've ridden. I have not rode the Tail of the Dragon but Mark in our group has and he agrees that Iron Mountain is better. Have you ever ridden a pigtail bridge? It's basically a tight corkscrew turn with a bridge for an overpass. There are two of them and several tunnels thrown in along with a gazillion switchbacks! Sorry but I still haven't figured out the GoPro link. 16A winds through Custer State Park, then meets 87 which is the Needles Highway which is also a sweet road. To me what makes these roads extra special is the scenery like these pics.

On Iron Mountain Road

On 16A inside Custer Park grounds

On Needles Highway. Look close in the center and you can see vehicles waiting their turn to go through a tunnel. This is about 8 feet wide and maybe 12' high and about 100 - 120 ' long so it's alternateing traffic. I wouldn't wanna do it in a motorhome! We turned left down 89 South from the north end of the Needles highway and headed into Custer for lunch. Every town out here is geared up for Bike week and has the welcome mat out in a big way with designated bike parking front & center all around town. Custer even had a small vendor area setup as well. After lunch we headed for Jewell Cave National Mon. on 16 west. We got there about 2:30 and they were booked til at least 5:30 so we opted to get tickets for the first tour in the morning at 9:20 tomorrow. We backtracked on 16 back to Custer and picked up 385N to Crazy Horse Memorial and arrived about 3:45. It's quite the story on this memorial and pretty amazing how one man, Korzak Ziolkowski, took on this project and that no Gov't funding has been used! When (if) completed it will make Rushmore a dwarf in comparison. They have a very ambitious vision of the campus they envision here and have made significant progress. You can check it out here. http://crazyhorsememorial.org

From Crazy Horse we continued north on 385 to 244 east to Mt. Rushmore were we arrived near 6pm. This memorial is well laid out and is able to move people through very well. As a matter of fact even though there are several hundred thousand extra folks here for bike week we haven't really had any difficultly getting around or waiting!!!!

From Rushmore we headed back up 16 into Rapid and went straight to the Firehouse Brewing company for dinner a little after 8. Being Friday night it was busy but we only had to wait about 20-30 minutes to get seated. They give you plastic fireman hats to wear, which very few people do, but our crew after a long day was a bit punch drunk by this time and we provided the entertainment for the rest of the folks there!!! After dinner we got back to the hotel about 11ish and called it a day as we have to be on the road by 7:45 to make our Jewell Cave tour.

Day 6 Mitchell, SD to Rapid City VIa Badlands National Park

Got on the going early (6:30) to beat the heat. It was about 63 degrees when we left which made for an awesome ride compared to yesterday. The posted speed limit is 75 on I-90 and 80 is the norm which is where we had the cruise set. At that speed we need to stop for fuel at about 160 miles for us 5 gallon tank guys. We got off exit 131 which is the east entrance to The Badlands National Park. Here's a few teaser pics. I have some GoPro video that I need to figure out how to upload/host.

What impresses me the most is the enormity of the area. This one park is over 244,000 acres! And there are lots more State & National parks/monuments/grasslands areas as well. Growing up and living in the Northeast sheilds you from how vast our country is. When you come out of the park you happen to be in Wall, SD so of course when in Wall, do as the Wallians and do the tourist rap thing! Not an item on my bucket list but when you don't have to go out of your way you do it. Ended up eating lunch there and walking around a short bit then headed out for the last 53 miles to the hotel in Rapid. By now the temp was pushing 100 again so it was nice that it was only about a 45 minute ride. Checked in unloaded the bikes as this will be home for the next 6 days then went to check out Badlands Harley as they have a huge vendor area of thier own for the Rally. Got there about 5:10 and they close at 6 and the sky turned black for some thunderstorms to break the heat so by 6 we headed back to the hotel and decided to just go next door to the TGIF's to avoid getting wet. Tomorrow the fun begins.

Day 5 Sparta, WI to Mitchell, SD

The word for the day is HOT!!!!!!!!!!! Here's a pic of my dashboaard temp guage for reference.

We left our hotel just after 7 with our plan to stop at the Harley dealer in Sioux Falls so I could get a new rainsuit bottom as I found out on Saturday mine is leaking as the interior secondary tape seams have basically come loose. The weather at departure was nice. As a matter of fact we all had sweatshirts on. We went about 120 miles and someone needed a "bathroom break"!! We decided to gas up as well. By this time it had warmed up and we took a layer off. By the time we got to Sioux Falls about 1 PM it was near 105 degrees!! It may be normal for this area but it SUCKS!! We did just under 400 miles today and I think I'm at 1,850 plus miles from my house. One other thing we've seen mostly in Minnesota are wind farms. HUGE wind farms. We had one in Indiana about halfway between Indianapolis & Chicago and the rest were in Minnesota. There are hundreds of them in each of these farms. At some of the farms they all are running and some maybe 50%. Don't know why that is but these are always located in the middle of either soybean or cornfields that I assume the farmer gets some kind of stipend for. Here's a pic of them by Annie from the passenger seat as we were going along.

Tomorrow we will arrive in Rapid City which is our home base for the next 6 nights. Mark's wife Doreen is flying in tomorrow to join our crew. We plan on doing Wall's Drug and the Badlands National Park on the way to Rapid tomorrow. One last thing I need to correct. I had thought Mark had been to Sturgis before but he has not so we are all newbs for this adventure!