Some new pics

Days 27 and 28
This is us starting out on Thursday. Ridiculous, riding in this rain is nuts! Gotta be done though. Got places to go.

Note the fine gloves.


Home at last! 7698.1 miles.

It's been a week now since we completed our trip, it still seems somewhat unreal. It was definitely an unreal trip. Absolutely fantastic! I want to get some pictures of all of us in our "normal" mode of life. We're actually pretty regular folks....in a manner of speaking.

Days 27 and 28

Day 27-28
We arrived Home on Friday a day ahead of schedule. We were early because of the running ahead of the storms. Thursday was a miserable day. We woke up to rain and cold. Fortunately, we had the wisdom and the sheer exhaustion, to stay in a hotel on Thursday night. All day Thursday it rained. We were all just soaked. I don't think we even took a picture at all, except this one.
Our hotel for the night.
For a while we all had plastic bags over gloves to try and stay a bit drier. It helped until the wind tore the bags. Then we stopped and bought rubber gloves to go over garden gloves. This worked pretty well. Jim's and Doug's rain suits worked pretty good for keeping most of them dry. But with as wet as it was, nothing was perfect, we all got wet. Our first thought in the morning was that we would ride out of the rain in a few miles. Nooooooo. Not even....At first I was wearing a leather jacket. That was not a good idea. I then put on a rain jacket and rain chaps. The rain chaps were ok except that the new wind shield on my bike funneled the wind and rain up between my legs and up the center of my body. It's great in the desert. It sucks in the rain! That means I was always sitting in a puddle, and the wind and rain went right in the zipper of my jacket. This didn't make me real happy, nor comfortable. When we finally stopped for the night, I think I was colder than I have been in 20 years or more.
It rained until we stopped for the night, near Champaign, IL.

By morning the rain had stopped and the sky was not terribly threatening, although rain was in the forcast. We packed all of our still pretty wet gear, clothes and stuff and got ready to roll one more time. We had a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby, then were on the rode once again.
We had just over one hundred miles to Indianapolis then about a hundred home.
The ride was cold but the rain did hold off all the way to Jim's house where we officially ended this road trip with 7698.1 miles!

7698.1 mile....no mechanical problems of note.....one tire change, not serious... no injuries, slight sunburn.... no accidents.... no serious animal encounters, 'cept the skunk and that didn't turn serious and the bears that ignored us.....and surprisingly...no one really tried to run us over....except that one lady in Carmel, but even she didn't try real hard.
We did note several times through out this trip how people tended to give us added lee way, motioned us all three to go through stop signs or lights together, most usually didn't try to cut between us. It was actually noticeable that people tried to accomodate us. It was really quite a surprise!
Some lessons....a Wide Glide is not a touring bike, but it isn't bad, after market wind shields are for bugs only!
All in all, one terrific month of riding through this great country of ours!
We have a bunch of pictures yet to load up here. Between the 4 of us we took nearly 3000 pictures! (we won't load them all) Doug was by far the most prolific photographer, but then, he was the unofficial, official potographer for the group. His total was at least 2087, maybe more. I'm still looking. Between Jim and Pam there were 586, and for me, a paltry 311. An awesome collection of.... mostly... reasonably ok photos...a few really bad ones....some that can't be readily identified...and some really, really good ones. We still don't have Doug's 35 mm photos. That may take a while. When he switches to the 35mm, it usually means you're in for a treat. Some of his Grand Canyon photos from 2007 were simply fantastic!
I still want to get some last thoughts together from everyone and post them here. I also want to post more photos. If you're interested check back in a few days and maybe we'll have more of them up.

To those out there who followed this little adventure of ours, thanks for coming along, hope you enjoyed the ride. I know we did! This blog part was fun to put together too. It gave us a chance to kick around the days ride, and just recount the day and compare notes.
Maybe we'll do something like this again.

To Doug, Jim, and Pam, was this a hell of a ride or what!!!?

The following pictures were taken at Big Sur by our California friends Barbara and Ben.
Barb sent them along with a short note.
In both photos Pam's trying to hide, note the hat.....
Hello Ohio Friends,

Thank you for the photos! They add story to our trip and our grandkids (8 & 10) chose them as their favorite out of nearly 500.

I have many of the scenic route you were on, from Malibu to Fort Bragg (over the Golden Gate), to Leggett up 101. Giant redwoods,

beaches, wine country, Hearst Castle etc. Would be glad to share if you missed photos of something special. Hoping you continued

on having a wonderful vacation and arrived home safe and sound.

From Anaheim, California ........Safe travels, Barbara & Ben

Barbara H.

Indeed we did continue on, and in the end, arrived home safe and sound.

Day 26 another long ride

Day 26
Another loooooong day. Somewhere north of 450 miles again today. We ended up last night in I believe it was Big Springs NE. Today we rode again to keep ahead of the storms. We did stop in a town called Gothenburg to see the Pony Express Museum. They had moved an original Pony Express station to the town park to make a museum. Pretty interesting.
Pony Express Museum
On this same stop there was a sod house displayed and some interesting barbed wire sculptures.
Blow this up, it's kind of neat. Made from barbed wire.
Seems we didn't get a picture of the sod house. I was sure we did. After all, we got this next one and it was right outside the sod house......
Blowing this one up might help...but I doubt it!
Anyway....after this it was just more riding. A lot more riding.
I think, besides the storms, at this time we are probably a bit like horses in that when they know it's time to head for the barn, that's what they do. I think we see home getting closer and it's time to get there.

Day 25....looooong day

day 25
570 miles today, boy am I tired. That's a workout!
For Pam...we sure miss having you here...Now we have to make our own breakfast, wash our own clothes and fold up our own tents.
Jim wants to know who's going to make him coffee in the morning?
How's he going to get by on his own? Y'all know this could be serious right?
Anyway.....
This was one long day! There are snow storm warnings for the Rockies in Colorado, and Wyoming. There are storm warnings for the area around Cheyenne Wyoming. We were in Lyman Wyoming this morning.
The KOA in Lyman by the way is a very nice one. The tent camp sites are big and covered with thick grass. The common room has a couple of computers for guests to use. The common room also is open as long as you need it. That helped us a great deal. We were told to just turn out the lights when we left. Don't lock the door in case we want to go back in.
In the morning, the temp was down in the 40's. Fairly chilly. The mornings ride was going to be cold. Pulled my left shoulder out while trying to put on my chaps for the ride. It took a few minutes to figure out which way to move things to get me put back together. Eventually that was accomplished. This was the first time this trip that I had real problems with my shoulders. No lasting problems, a few aspirin and I'm on my way.
We decided in a "corporate decision" that we should ride down to the Flaming Gorge before turning east. So, off to the south to see the Flaming Gorged Dam and surrounding area.
We started off with breakfast at a local eatery. Much too much food, but, GOOD! Then...on to highway 414. Right outside of town we saw, of all things, a moose!
You'll need to enlarge these to see anything. We were running about 50 or 60 mph and he wasn't standing still.
This guy was just running along a fence line, apparently trying to get out of the fenced field
There were also horses in the field with the moose and they weren't happy at all!
We continued on down the road.....This road was supposed to be quite boring. It wasn't! Not at all! This road runs through active ranch land, so there are numerous fields with large numbers of cattle and horses. There are also many different land formations that are incredible sights! Canyons, meadows, ridge lines, hills, cliffs, anything you might associate with the west, it's here. The entire length of this road is a fascinating ride. The speed limit is generally 65 mph. The road surface is good and the road is gently winding, so it's also a comfortable ride, even for me.
Be very aware of the ranch vehicals that may come onto the highway from seemingly anywhere!

View along highway 414
Near the southern end of 414 there is a nondescript turn off labled Sheeps Creek Geological Route. This turns off to the right into a campground just off the road. From here the road continues through some extremely dramatic land formations. This is one cool ride!Views along Sheep Creek
Doug and Jim at Sheep Creek Campground

One heck of a nice surprise! This is a must do for anyone going down 414 to the Flaming Gorge Dam! The road is not always the best, some gravel and dirt,some black top. You should also leave the 30+ ft. motor home at the campground and drive the towed car. Narrow winding road. Well worth seeing.
At Flaming Gorge Dam, we stopped at the visitors center to ask about access to the dam.
View of bridge to dam from western approach
View of dam from the east side
The bridge to the dam area, west side
Approaching the bridge
At the visitors center we were informed that the only way to see the dam was with a formal tour. We all kindof did an awe' nuts type thing then the
lady ranger said that's not a problem, we're not busy, we can give you your own tour with just the 3 of you. This is way too cool! A private tour of the dam! Free! Then we found out we had to go through the metal detector and be searched just like the airports. Oh well, not too bad. A ranger completed these tasks and we were off to the dam!
We went down an elevator 6 stories to the top of the turbines.
From here we went out to the lower observation walkway just above the river. The white trucks have their noses right up to the fence of the visitors walkway.
From here we could see all the way to the top of the dam.
These are mainly trout gathered at the bottom of the dam.
Our tour guide was able to relate many facts concerning the dam and surrounding area. She was also able to field all of our questions.
Very neat tour!
View of eastern exit from the DamOnce through with the tour it was on the road again.
This time we meant business! We had storms to leave behind.
This detour took about 150 miles and 4 hours. We would travel another 420 miles before stopping to set up camp. We traveled interstate 80 to get as far ahead of the storms as possible.
We were very late and decided it would be easier to get a hotel than try to find a camp ground.
This we did. We had a very good dinner at a nearby steak house, then turned in for the night.
Tomorrows another day....we'll see where the storms are in the morning.