Well we got back on Sunday night about 6:30. It's amazing how much ground you can cover when it's all highway. We only ran into one accident that slowed us down. Riding I-74 across Indiana is pretty easy. Now, I-465 around Indy is just ridiculous. That part drags and you feel like it's never going to end.

I rode with my helmet on the entire trip until the last stretch. When we got to Shelbyville, IN at around 4:30, it felt like 150 degrees in my helmet. I asked Tom to house my helmet for the last stretch so I could cool off. It was nice to see some bike club members and spouses there when we rode in. A celebration drink was shared by all. Total mileage on my odometer was 6360.5 miles. John says Garmin thinks it was 5892 miles.

It feels good to be home. The only areas I feel the trip are in my hands and feet. I wore gloves the entire way also. I have good shoes, but the road just hums under your feet. My two and a half weeks of facial hair growth is not very impressive. It's time to clean up myself and get back to work. I'm not cleaning the bike until after bike night this Wednesday. Then that long process will take a couple days I'm sure.

This trip was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity. I can't thank John enough for throwing it out there. I only hope I held up my end and didn't drag him down too much. I'll post pictures to the past blogs and let you know when I get that accomplished. RIDE SAFE!!!

Today will be the shortest blog since we did nothing but ride major highways to get as far as possible. We fell short of our goal to get to Davenport, Iowa. The total mileage to get home is 477 miles. We did like 420 today. If I get within 100 miles of home, I am not stopping to camp. I will ride from Indy in the dark just to get home.

I saw corn fields, soy bean fields, cows and windmills. Iowa is flat and windy. They also have noticeable flood damage still. We thought we were slowing down for an accident and it was actually people looking at the high waters. We saw a couple vans and some mobile homes floating up next to the road. I can only imagine what it's like around this area with the amount of rain they have gotten.

My Honda speedometer is not accurate with its speed. I have to go 80 to actually go 75. That puts my mileage off from John's Garmin. I'm approaching 6000 miles for the trip. I expect my mileage will be closer to 6500 at the end of this trip. John will have the actual numbers!!!

Now we have the big move to try and get home. Our goal is to get across South Dakota in a day. We are riding west to east. It's very windy up here. The plains are teaming with hay fields and cows. I saw several sunflower fields. I'll have to check the next time I see sunflower seeds where they came from.

I played a golf course in Las Vegas called the Badlands. It's no comparison. You get up in these mountains that are only 2500-3000 feet and see what the high plains looks like. Several prairie dog mounds exist. Then you see the way the glaciers carved out the the canyons and look down into the lower plains. The mountains have various colors from the differing rocks in them. Now that was truly the Badlands. Make sure to check John's blog, he is eventually going to put up a video he shot with his camera from his bike while riding through the mountains. It's about a minute long and very awesome.

We drove all day, but fell short of getting across South Dakota. We camped in Mitchell at about 8:30. The crickets were unbelievable. So were the mosquitoes. We didn't have it this bad in Canada. Hurriedly, we made it downtown to a bar for some food and ESPN. I haven't seen any sports in over two weeks. If you know me, that's a big deal. The place was called Dr. T's lounge. It was actually pretty cool. They had like 15 beers on tap. 70-80's rock music filled the room. The wings were pretty good.

When we got back to the campground, we started planning out routes home and checking the weather. The Midwest is hot and stormy. We expect to get wet at some point. The mileage is 5000 down and 900 to go. We will see how many days that will take us to get home.

Sturgis. What can I say about Sturgis. Jay took us on a ride through the Black Hills to Mt. Rushmore. Along the way you stop at small towns that have the population of like 909 and Jay had advised us that he was not going any father than Mt. Rushmore. He has ridden these roads several times. I did not have the cell numbers of the others who had gone with us. Jay got me to Mt. Rushmore with no problems. Shockingly, the monument isn't really that big or imposing. Super cool details on the faces, but just not that big. I had been forewarned about this fact and it was true. It's very cool that after you leave the front of the monument, you can get a profile of Washington as you go around the mountain.

Alone, I continued on through Custer National Park to ride Needles Highway. Again, it's a narrow winding road up through the park. The curves are very sharp (like 10 mph), but the ride itself is very slow. Great views in the park keep you busy. The road has some tunnels they made out of the mountains that you must pass through. These tunnels are only wide enough for one vehicle. Cool short tunnels, but very narrow. Buses actually go through these things. I didn't meet any of those until I got out of the park. You have to have nerves of steel to drive something big through there.

Figuring I may never be here again, I took a route to the Crazy Horse monument. It's not very big either. I didn't go into the park, but everyone says you should see the movie. I knew a little about the guy who started it and his family already. There are pictures of Crazy Horse and his family from way back. I hear he was not a handsome man. What I heard they had that really interested me was something you could look through the super imposed the final creation onto the mountain itself as it stands. That way the final outcome is there for you to see since it will take hundreds of years to finish this thing.

I went through Deadwood on my way back to Sturgis. I don't watch the show on HBO or Direct tv, but the town has lots of history. The only history I saw was tons of bikes and bikers walking around. Deadwood is a bigger city around here and many bikers go there to see vendors and party during this week. Out of Deadwood I followed a bout 70 bikes back to Sturgis through another famous parkway.

Our plan for the night was to hit Full Throttle. This bar is only open one week out of the year. If go early enough, you can park you bike right in the bar. The bar is made of wood and has multiple levels. The live music for the night came from several heavy metal bands finishing with Jackyl. They provide several contests and other activities throughout to keep everyone interested. The staff is encouraged to dress appropriately and pose for pictures. It pretty much lived up to expectation. Thank God buses take you from the campground to the place. Believe me, they are packed and everyone is screaming or dancing or anything you want to do or need.

We spent the night in a hotel knowing it was our last good night of sleep and shower for awhile. We were up and ready to go before 9 a.m. which was a miracle for our group. Today would be straight highway riding until our final destination. Just as we were ready to leave some guy wiped out his SUV into the metal guard rail outside our hotel. The sound of the multiple sirens brought out a young black bear to see the commotion. It didn't stay long.

We saw Little Big Horn Park and decided to stop. The sight is hilly, not mountainous. There are long valleys and normal hills along them. You could imagine Little Big Horn and his troops looking down on Custer as he moved his troops along the valley. The amount of head stones is amazing. The total slaughter is represented clearly. I mean even the drummer went down in the battle. It must have been total arrogance on Custer's behalf to explain why he would even take on anybody with those topography issues.

We drove by Devil's Tower. This rock formation in the middle of of valleys and prairies clearly stands out. There are several stories as to how this formation was created. Lots of motorcycles stop to take take pictures. We are close enough to Sturgis that all you see is motorcycles.
We stopped at Hullet, Wyoming to see their Wednesday Festival during Sturgis' Bike Week. The streets are lined with bikes when you show up. The population is a little over 900 until this week. There were at least 250 bikes. Several shops sold souvenirs. Food and beer was abundant.An accident took place between some motorcycles on our way out. One biker died and 5 wer injured. The road was closed for about 2 hours. We finally got through and on our way to Hog Heaven.

The road to Strugis had several deer in the fields along the road. We were seeing some wildlife in America again.

Hog Heaven is a camping area were we met other people from HVL. The camping area has live bands every night and its own bar and food. It's quite an established area to stay and see the sites around Sturgis. Thanks to Jay, Annie, Steve and Stacy for their hospitality.

We left the Tetons park to get to Yellowstone just in time for Old Faithful to have completed her show. We stunk around for the next hour and half to see it blast. You can watch other geysers in the area give off steam too, but none gush up like Old Faithful. A small chipmunk entertained us before the show. Old Faithful arrived right on time. We enjoyed the show, but we had to get on the road.

It takes 4 hours to get out of the park from Old Faithful on the southwest side to Bear Tooth highway on the northeast side. We got to see our first bear. It was a small black bear. John was admonished by the ranger for trying to get too close to get a picture. LOL

We saw some female elks and their babies. We saw more bison. Only this time, we saw an entire canyon bottom full of several different herds. You can only dream of the times when that space was covered in bison. With a stream running down the middle and high sides on both sides of the road, I thought of the Indians living there in peace with all they needed at their disposal. A little while later, we saw another bear. This time it was a grizzly bear. He was much bigger and a different color. A ranger was also at this site monitoring the bear and the humans.

Heading out of the park. we started into the Bear Tooth Highway. This highway climbs up one side of a mountain and then back down the other side. The road here has been under construction for 3 years. It was drawing to a close. The signs stated they had put down oil on the road and it would be very slippery for bikes. That's great news since this road is nothing but switchbacks going up and down the mountain. The corners on top are 20-25 mph. The corners at the bottom are 35-40 mph. You ride and ride until you reach 10,947 feet. I actually missed the sign as I was paying attention to the road. The decline down the other side took 16 miles. There was actually a lake at the top. There are no trees at that elevation. It's definitely a top 10 ride of any one's lifetime.

We are now in Red Lodge, Montana. It's actually kinda of a happening town. I ate another buffalo burger at a nice restaurant. It was much better than the first one I had. I also had the 13 year running famous clam chowder. It was good. We have along day of highway riding in front of us as we head to Sturgis tomorrow.

We left Pinedale for Grand Tetons National Park. It was to be an easy day of riding through the national parks. We looked like a three ring circus trying to get organized with our park passes and getting gas. The park has a couple road construction sites that have up to 30 minute delays. Riding amongst the mountains and lakes, experiencing the changes and temperatures and smelling the pines as they grew close to road was what the day was to be about.

We made a decision to camp at Grand Teton instead of going to Yellowstone. We knew it would put us behind schedule, but the weather looked bad. We barely got to the camp site when the rain started. We hustled up our tents and hankered down for one heck of a storm. The storm had lots of lightening and thunder. It clattered and rang amongst the mountains. The rain fell fast and loud on our tents. We sat in our tents until the rain had stopped. You can tell because the birds let you know by chirping it's ok. Waiting out a large thunderstorm like is actually very cool.

The park supervisors came by to tell us that just yesterday they had a bear encounter right where we had set up our tents. It appeared that some Japanese tourists got a little surprise from the bear. They said the bear was not afraid of the humans. The park rangers finally got the bear to leave. Every tree in our area had bear marks. GREAT. I think we all slept on pins and needles that night expecting something. Luckily, we had no bear sightings. At breakfast the next morning, our waitress told us about how the rangers had relocated bears from surrounding ranches to the area we camped in. No wonder sites were available late in the day.

They talk about how the mountains create their own weather. We entered the park in sunshine. We drove around the mountains to a storm. After the storm, we got a cold wind. The storm had cleared the skies and you could see lots of stars. I think everyone slept with all their clothes on to stay warm. We woke up to about 35 degrees and sunny skies. It looked like a long day was ahead of us.