Safe and Sound at Home

nuff said.. Actually too tired to write anything, will have to spend some time organizing before I post.

Friday

All downhill from now. Great weather to date. Tomorrow is Saturday. We are in Woodward, OK. Likely rain on way home tomorrow.

Tuesday - Day 4

Well, Day 4 already.

Missed a couple of postings, obviously. so this is a bit of a placeholder Will fill in the blanks later.

we are in Deadwood. to get here yesterday we did go through the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Pretty cool roads today, lots of wildlife, Mount Rushmore....

BHR - Day 1

We arrived in Raton NM about 6 pm. I think we have close to 30 bikes. 500+ miles, have to verify tomorrow. Great ride but long, New Mexico is beautiful Lots and lots of antelope

Countdown has begun!

Less than 48 hours to go.... We have to be in Decatur at 7 am on Saturday. Have been getting ready, have most of my clothes packed, I need to see what other bag I have to take. I'm pretty well at my capacity, but want a little more without overstuffing everything. I hope our trip is relatively dry, we have been having a lot of rain here in North Texas. Gainesville had over 8 inches and major flooding earlier this week. We did not get that brunt only about 1.5 inches. Rain or threat every day. As long as we get on the road dry I will be relatively happy!

Here is our high level plan.

Day 1(512 miles)
Decatur to Raton, New Mexico. Basically 287 over to Amarillo, then 385/87 to Raton.

Day 2 (317 miles) the scenery begins to improve!
I-25 North to Walsenburg
Hwy 69 through Westcliffe to Hwy 50 (The Sangre de Christo mountain range will be on our left as we ride this valley)
Hwy 50 west to Hwy 285
Hwy 285 north to Leadville (Highest in elevation incorporated town in the United States)
Hwy 91 from Leadville over Fremont Pass (11,313 feet)
Pickup I-70 at Wheeler Junction and head back east through the Eisenhower Tunnel
Pickup US40 at Empire and take it over Berthoud Pass (11,307 feet)
That will bring us into Winter Park where we spend the night.

Day 3: (459 miles)
Follow US40 to Granby and pickup Hwy 34.
Hwy 34 goes through Rocky Mountain National Park. It is also called Trail Ridge Road. We will go over several passes. The highest one being a little over 12,000 feet.

At Loveland we will pick up I-25 and head North
We will stay on I-25 all the way to Ammon where we pick up Hwy 18, Hwy 18 to Hwy 85, Hwy 85 to Deadwood

Day 4: (153 miles)
Mount Rushmore, the Iron Mountain Road (famous for its pig tail curves), Needles Highway, lunch in Hill City and Crazy Horse Monument in the afternoon.
We will be in Custer State Park. It is a state park of South Dakota.
Mount Rushmore is a National Monument vs. a National Park.

Day 5 (373 miles)
Spearfish Canyon, Devil’s Tower and run up to North Dakota for those that want to say they have ridden in that state. The plan is just to cross the border and come back down to Sturgis. Visit Sturgis HD on the way back to Deadwood

Day 6 (402 miles)
Depart Deadwood, stop at Rapid City HD, stop at Wall Drug Store, ride through Badlands National Park, then start heading south through Nebraska to North Platte.

Day 7 (381 miles)
North Platte to Woodward, OK

Day 8 (485 miles)
Woodward, OK to home via Turkey, TX for those that need the LSC point. This can be shorter if you don’t need the LSC point in Turkey

BHR preparations

No riding to speak of this weekend. Took bike to the shop, had to get two new tires and oil change. Probably could have went a few more miles, although there wasn't a lot left on the rear tire and with over 3000 miles expected before the end of the month, it had to be done. Also picked up a fairing bag that everyone seems to like so much for all the small miscellaneous stuff that needs a place to go.

The BHR, or Black Hills Rendevous, will take us through 9 states including Texas. In order, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and back home. We will be gone Saturday through Saturday. It will be a long ride through incredible scenery.

We also did some work on the house this weekend, working in the game room to install a fridge/microwave built in.

States ridden map

Well I found this link to create a map of states I have ridden. Not many so far but after this month it will change quite a bit.



create your own personalized map of the USA

ROT Rally

Went to ROT on the weekend. Originally Darlene and I were supposed to go but we've been doing so much we changed our minds. Darlene wanted to stay home, spend some time with the boys, unpack and also save for the BHR trip. She's been there before, I truly have not, so I did go down, but just for one night.

Jiggy and I headed down bright and early Friday morning. We left Lewisville just after 7 am and headed straight down 35. That was one of the best trips I've ever taken down through Austin. We have virtually no traffic tie ups, and it was a workday morning! We arrived at the rally site, registered and parked by about 11:30 am.

We hung out for a while, checked out the vendors, the bikes, the grounds and all the people for a while then went to the hotel to get our room and get cleaned up. Afterwards we hung out on 6th street for supper and to check out the bikes and people.

We ventured over to congress to watch the parade, which took forever to start, and took even longer to end! In fact we left before it was over. We then hooked up with Stitch and a buddy of his for more debauchery. However it didn't get too crazy overall.

Saturday we got up when we got up, had breakfast and headed out for a ride at around 10:30. We went to Luckenbach, via some Ranch to Market roads, then on to the Willow City Loop. I left Jiggy at the road to Enchanted Rock then headed home. I got in around 8:30. It was a long day, stayed off interstate for the most part.

Total weekend miles 675. Time for new tires and oil change before our big trip.