It hardly seems real that I’m waking up in Key West and that I rode all the way here on my motorcycle!  Reality settles in and I’m excited to explore the town, especially given everyone’s suggestions on where to go and what to see.

I climb on the back of Terron’s bike and we hit the road.  The first thing I want to see is the giant conch shell I spotted on a map.  It’s big, so big that I can stand inside it!  It’s at the high school, because they are home of the Conchs!  Nobody else finds this fascinating?  Guess not, we are the only ones here, in a vast empty lot, so we have fun taking photos.

Next stop, the Southernmost spot in the United States.  I knew there’d be a line here to take photos. I am not one to stand in line for anything really, so I just walk around and look out over the water.  Cuba may only be 90 miles away, but I don’t see it! 

Next stop, Hemmingway’s house.  I am entertained by the sign that says ‘Don’t pick up cats’.  There are 56 cats on the property, all descendants of Hemmingway’s cats.  Terron sees one walking around with a gecko in its mouth! 

I also want to see the lighthouse a block away, interested to see its position; not right on the water, but inland a bit, because that’s a higher point.  The grounds are full of fun sculptures and the lighthouse itself is beautiful!

I spot a large chicken with tiny chicks on the sidewalk and I want photo, so I extend my arms way out with my camera and the chicken flies up and pecks me!  I let out a loud shriek, so startled!  I guess my arms and camera were too close for her!  I am now laughing out loud at my scream and take a few photos-from a distance!

We make our way to Blue Heaven, a bar and restaurant tucked under huge trees.  The shade, fans and cold drink are very welcome right now.  Before leaving the bar, I ask our bartender where she likes to eat and enjoy conch.  She is so sweet, she describes places for us and writes it all down!

We thank her and walk out to the street, where we see her first suggestion right at the end of the block.  We make a beeline for Johnson’s Grocery.  When we walk inside, we see it’s a tiny little store, literally a few coolers and a counter.  I don’t see anything to suggest they serve food here, but I ask the gentleman if they have conch salad.  Of course they do!  So we order a fresh conch salad and a ‘traveler’ of Red Stripe to share.  Seth Wayne gave me this tip, telling me that you can have an adult beverage on the street here, called a traveler.  His wife serves up the salad, while he carefully wraps the bottle of Red Stripe in a small paper bag.  We are talking with him about the heat and he tells us was raised here in Key West, but the Air Force took him to Japan and to Anchorage, Alaska, before he settled back here. We thank him for his service and walk outside to find a spot of shade to enjoy our lunch.  Wow, it’s delicious!  Freshly chopped onions and jalapeño peppers mixed with chunks of conch and citrus juices.  While we stand there eating, the gentleman from the store comes outside to lock up.  He yells over to ask us if we like the salad.  We yell back our ecstatic approval and are thankful that we got there before he closed up for the day.

Now that we’ve fueled up, we’re ready to tackle Duval Street.  This place really does remind me in many ways of New Orleans.  We wander in and out of shops and bars, trying to hit all of the ones recommended to us.   But about every third or fourth shop, some guy with a foreign accent lures me inside for a sample of some miracle cream.  I get sucked in twice, Terron moving on to find himself a beverage and some conch fritters.  During my second encounter, I emerge to find Terron across the street in a gallery, considering an art purchase.  I head over and now there’s new art being shipped to our house!

It’s now time to scoot over to the friends of our neighbors, who summer here.  Helen and Mike welcome us into their beautiful bungalow and we sit outside next to the pool, hearing all about their scuba diving experiences.  What a wonderful way to spend happy hour; meeting new friends!

Now it’s getting close to sunset so we move on down Duval and see Lagerheads.  We get a beer, pull up a chair and settle in for the show. I run down to dip my toes in the water, so warm!   The pier is packed with people, all waiting for the sun to set.  It really is beautiful!  I take a number of photos and now as I’m reviewing them, I see that most people turned their backs on the most spectacular part of the sunset, simply because the sun had disappeared over the horizon.  While they all walk away, I take more photos and continue to stare.

We round out our day here in Key West with a great dinner at Conch Republic Seafood Company.

Today, the first thing I do when I get up is put sunscreen on the zebra stripe I now have across my arms.  I know today’s going to be another very hot day!

We hit the road from Gainesville, Florida on the day we’ve been planning and thinking about for 2 years now.  We are going to ride across the Keys ending up at Key West!  Terron chooses the Florida Turnpike to get us there.  These people drive fast!  And right off the bat, I get a huge bug splat on my face mask!  We go with the flow, sweltering every mile in our riding apparel.  Our custom fitted suits (Mark Vanderwall says we look like Power Rangers and Terron just calls them Monkey Suits) are designed for safety for sure, but my pants are HOT!  I chose this fabric, versus Terron’s mesh fabric, because more times than not, I’m cold, especially crossing mountain passes. We utilize the turnpike’s convenient service centers for gas and ice cold water.  Terron kept going back in and asking for another cup of free ice to fill his water bladder in his tank bag.  He got me a big cup of ice for my water badder too.  Drinking that ice cold water in the 100 degree heat was so refreshing.

The first toll we pay is $4.50 per bike.  Then not another toll for miles and miles.  This next one is $14.50 per bike.  Terron is so flabbergasted by this amount, he asked the attendant THREE times, “That’s per motorcycle?”.  Now we are finally south of Miami; getting closer!  We stop again to pay a toll, $1.80 per bike.  The next toll says, “billed by plate” so I have no idea how much that one will be.  We hit a few tolls like that so we’ll find out when the bill comes in the mail!  One more toll, I think was less than a dollar and the final toll is another $1.40.  I’m thinking this turnpike is expensive, but then I do the math and it turns out we paid 22 cents per mile, per bike.  At $55 for tolls, we spent less for gas to ride across Florida.

Okay, so where are these Keys?

Just as we get past Homestead, the temperature reading on my bike says 100 degrees, as it has for the past few hours, but I see dark clouds ahead.  Yes!  A rain shower!  Sure enough, we ride into it and the temperature drops from 100 to 70 degrees in 90 seconds!  Ahhh relief!

On the other side of the rain, however, it is bumper to bumper traffic.  Apparently this Key West place is rather popular!  I know Florida’s a long state.  I can see that on the map, but it’s really, really, really, really long, when you’re just so eager to get somewhere!  Two and a half hours later, and I will admit the longest 2.5 hours I’ve experienced this entire trip, we are finally here!

It’s just about sunset and it’s just beautiful.  Our hotel is on the quiet side of the Key, right across from the beach on the south end.  The air is warm, but not uncomfortable.  After we get into our room, we ditch all of our riding gear and head out on Terron’s bike to explore.

While we’re cruising along a small street, a guy races up on a motorcycle next to us and yells out, “I’m from Lynnwood, Washington!”  We chuckle at his blurted out statement and yell back that we just rode all the way from Seattle!  He says, “WOW!  That’s cool!  I was born in Redmond but I grew up in Lynnwood! Have fun!” And then he races off.

We then stop in a little liquor store the hotel clerk told us about to pick up a beverage for later, and while paying, I ask the clerk where he would go eat dinner.  He says, without hesitation, “Hogfish Bar and Grill on Stock Island.”  I said, “Great, which direction?”  That’s when he says, “It’s not easy to find.  Just get yourself across to Stock Island and then ask someone how to get there.  It’s in Safe Harbor.”  I think this man is not a friend of technology.  All we do is look up the Hogfish on our smart phones.  Terron goes to Google Maps and I go the bar’s website, which includes an animated map on how to get there.  Yes, I can see that there are a number of turns, but we will find it!  And we do!  As we park, the band on stage is belting out the Blues!  We are shown to a picnic table out on the dock next to a marina and we feast on lobster, crab and artichoke dip, conch fritters, grilled Hogfish (which is a snapper) and the grilled sampler of Hogfish, scallops, lobster and squid!  Terron makes his usual, after dinner declaration, “I’m fat and happy!”

I love it when a day starts out with laughter and then it lasts all day!  There are a number of things that really amuse me at breakfast.  First, while gathering breakfast in the hotel, a female voice suddenly comes from the shorts pocket of the man in front of me: “in 500 feet turn left onto Brooks Drive.”  He quickly reaches into his pocket to silence this voice!  He walks over to the coffee and the voice gives him another command:  “…turn left onto 4^th Street.”   Again, he reaches in to silence the voice.  I silently chuckle to myself!  Second, I survey the options and decide on eggs, though as I reach for them, I really wonder if these are real or rubber.  They king of look real and then kind of not.  I flip them over, before tasting and think they must be real, just cooked in some odd fashion.  Then I taste them and let me tell you they don’t taste real.  

Okay this is a big day, trying to make up for yesterday’s break down and lost time.  By the end of the day we have logged 772 miles.  As we hit the road, I try not to think about the numbers or the Friday traffic that I know we’ll hit more than once; instead I just focus on the sights.

In Illinois, the corn fields are filling in nicely and as we get further south, I see a few more ponds and lakes.  We cross into Kentucky and there are even more lakes and rivers and now we’re getting into some familiar territory.   We roll through an area called Land Between the Lakes, where we vacationed 2 years ago with Sandy & Tim, Cathy & Mark and Jill, Robert and their daughter Leah.  Super fun memories and at least today it’s not as hot as it was then, 88 right now versus 105 two summers ago.

Next, we cross into Tennessee and it’s getting hotter and hotter.  A smile grows on my face, as we pass a water-skier on a small lake.  Not only do I miss waterskiing every weekend as we did when we lived in Arkansas, but I love the fact that it’s barely mid-day and they’re already out enjoying the water!

This perma-grin stays on my face, as we pass a rest area.  The parking lot is full of cars and commercial trucks.  And right there in the ‘rough’ – in the ditch between the parking lot and the highway, a man is chipping golf balls.  He had dozens of balls out there, just working on his game.  I imagine he’s a long haul trucker, working on his game during down time.  Why not?

Now it’s lunch time and we’re approaching Chattanooga and already I can see that the traffic is totally backed up, nothing but brake lights before us!  It’s 100 degrees and all previous smiles from the day are now gone from my face as I think about working the clutch and sitting on the bike in this heat.  Just then, Terron exits the highway we’re on.  We reach the stop sign at the end of it and he says okay, Google Maps says we can skip that traffic and save an hour by going the back roads.  I’m all for it!

We turn onto the Lookout Mountain Parkway and that smile returns!  This is a wonderful highway!  It’s winding and full of curves and hills and it’s completely tree-lined!  Towering trees, covered in huge broad-leafed ivy provides some shade!   This is not a straight shot and it seems a little convoluted, but I see that every turn we take, follows the same man in front of us; a local who I believe, already knows this short cut.  It’s also very entertaining, since at every stop sign, he turns to kiss his dog.  I can see this must happen all the time, since the dog actually expects the nuzzling, turning to get that smooth over and over.

After an hour or more, well on the other side of Chattanooga, we re-connect with the highway; not a single bit of traffic!  But I know that Atlanta is next and we’ll be hitting it right at rush hour.  Terron’s colleagues at work here in Alpharetta have been texting and emailing him all week, on ways to avoid the traffic.  Thanks guys!  We barely got stuck in any of it, mostly just through construction zones.

We’re now cruising through Georgia and man, this is a long state.  Where’s Florida?  We pull off for gas and while we’re grabbing some water and a snack, a bee stings Terron in the eyebrow!  The bugs of all kinds that we’ve encountered so far are amazing and we’re not even down into the Everglades yet!

Or the next gas stop!  We pull off for another fill up and then while I’m sitting in the parking lot on my bike and Terron’s inside buying ice and cold drinks to cool off, i meet some of the locals!  One man walks out of the store and says, “Man those are big bikes!  Those are really big bikes!”  I chat with him about our ST1300s and the larger Gold Wing and then he wishes us a safe trip.  Then a young woman with her daughter on a little bicycle comes by and smiles at me and says, “I love seeing a woman on a bike.  You go girl!”  Thanks!  Terron comes outside and says, “What’s that noise?  Are those bugs?”  I listen and agree that they are indeed bugs.  Sounds like locusts.  I check the map and guess where we are?  In Locust Grove!

Terron checks radar and then proclaims, “We’re going to get wet again!”  We start down the road and sure enough, just after it gets dark, the lightning is streaking across the sky in front of us.  Then the rain hits.  At first, it’s no different than Seattle rain; a light mist and drizzle.  But then it starts raining, not nearly as hard as we encountered a few days ago but it’s raining.  I am soaked again!  But at least I’m not melting anymore.  The storm took the temperature from 98 down to 75!

This steady rain is no big deal to us, but for some reason this phenomena of rain mystifies and scares the drivers around us, as if they’ve never encountered a storm before.  They put their hazards on, jam on their brakes and pull over left and right on the side of the road, stopping to let the storm pass!  Seriously, it’s just water!  Let’s look at those average rainfall totals:  49” in Atlanta versus 37” Seattle each year, they don’t know seem to know how to drive when it hits!

From Terron’s GoPro:  Lightning Video

We survive the storm, wet, but otherwise unscathed and by the time we hit the Florida line, it’s no longer raining.  I can now see palm trees!  We’ve finally hit our 5^th and final state for today!

We hit our hotel in Gainesville after 13 hours of riding; 772 miles, through 5 states!   So, here’s my state by state assessment of drivers:

Illinois = average drivers (of course this is my home state, but really nobody did anything great or offensive to me on the road today!)

Kentucky = very polite; drivers never camp in the left lane, only move there to pass! Thank you!

Tennessee = also polite but here, drivers go much faster than in Kentucky.  And it was rather disturbing to read the giant signs over the highway that repeatedly told me that 53 motorcyclists have already died this year in TN!  The signs repeat that very disturbing stat and tell all drivers to look twice for motorcycles. Thank you!

Georgia = obnoxious.  I’m sorry (I’m sure my friends in Georgia are in the minority and NOT in this category) but overall, Georgia drivers SPEED, run up on your tail and camp out in the left lane, when it’s sunny out and just don’t know what to do when it’s raining!

Florida = fast, yet polite!

And as I get off the bike and start gearing down at the hotel, I realize that when I pushed up my jacket sleeves earlier in the day, I gave myself quite the tan lines!  The space of skin exposed between my gloves and jacket is now burnt!  Ooops.  I’ll remember sunscreen tomorrow!

This is a question we often ask ourselves; either in past tense or future tense.  In past tense, how often have you found yourself asking, “What if I had ….?”  But whatever that decision was, it’s already made.  There’s no going back, no reason to think about “what if?” My brother taught me not to dwell on ‘would have’, ‘could have’ or ‘should have’ scenarios.

The other way to pose a ‘what if’ question is, in the future, and this is helpful to develop contingencies.  Little did I know the foreshadowing there was when my mother-in-law innocently asked me, “What if you have a major problem along the way, what will you do?”

I explained that we have time built into the trip. (Terron adds, “Not really”) For instance, we had planned an entire day at her house.  If something had happened on our way here, then we would have skipped that day.  But that’s not going to happen, I thought.

After breakfast, we said our goodbyes to my mother-in-law Dani and sister-in-law Crystal and hit the road, bound for Chattanooga, Tennessee.  We get only a block away from Dani’s house and I realize that my bike is not working properly; I cannot shift into third gear. I get on the CB and let Terron know, and we circle around the block right back to Terron’s mom’s house.
Terron checks the oil level and decides that my bike needs oil. We add oil to my bike, then add some to his.  OK now are ready to hit the road again. We wave goodbye again, put Dani’s house in our mirrors and only a block away, I get on the CB again and tell Terron that my bike still is not working properly so we pull into a parking lot. Terron then takes my bike for a test drive around the block and when he returns, he says, “Yep it’s broken”. Bummer!  I immediately get on the phone and start calling local motorcycle shops.  The first is super nice and tells me they can’t help, but they tell me that Hawkeye Motor Works, about 30 minutes away, should be able to help.

Terron plots a course to get us there involving no interstate, just city streets, since I cannot shift beyond 2^nd gear.  Along the way, Terron reviews scenarios over the CB with me, on what we’ll do if this problem ends this trip. We review the different scenarios; after all he is Mr. Contingency, even though I don’t want to hear any of it.  I quietly listen and stew a little bit.

We get to the motorcycle shop, where they test drive my bike and put it up on a rack.  Terron and I wander the vast showroom of bikes they have and he immediately starts picking out a new bike for me.  He even reviews all of the financials on how we could trade my bike in, and how we’d afford a new bike for me mid-trip!  Again, I play along.  In the midst of me sitting on bikes, the service manager comes out to let me know that the gearshift linkage is corroded and that’s why it won’t shift up beyond 2^nd gear.  

He said they freed it up and it is working again, but given the miles still before us, he suggests that I let them replace the part.  Of course!  Now the only problem is that the part is in the warehouse and they cannot get it until 3:00pm.  Okay, so we two-up on Terron’s bike, which means I’m now the passenger and he head back to my mother-in-law’s house.  As we drive there, I really concentrate on taking in all of the architecture here, through Davenport, Iowa, and into Rock Island, Illinois.  I lived here in the Quad Cities for a year, eons ago.  The architecture here is just beautiful, with many brownstones and Victorian buildings.   And I spot so many new things that either didn’t exist or I never saw before.  Like any reporter, who tends to spot landmarks based on stories, I also spot the buildings and places I had visited way back when, when I worked in town.  Now back at Dani’s house, we get to see her youngest sister, Aunt Janet, since she’s there visiting.

Hawkeye Motor Works calls about 4:30pm to let me know my bike is ready to roll.  Okay, back across town, with broken parts in my hand and just $155 shelled out for the new part and labor, we are finally on the road.  Thank you Hawkeye Motor Works for quickly and efficiently helping out a distressed traveler.

There’s no way for us to make Chattanooga tonight, so we set our sights on Marion, Illinois, about five hours away. We hit the interstate at 5:30pm. My frustration at this delay in our trip is rewarded with plenty of great scenery over the course of the next five hours. The first three hours I enjoy watching the flat farmland; fields of corn and soybeans going by me. The one thing that really strikes me, are the barns.  The last few days going through Wyoming and South Dakota, I took note that it seemed as though every barn was painted red.  The barns here in central Illinois are all gray and they definitely have a different shape than the ones I saw a few days ago.

The sun is now setting; about 8:30pm and it’s time to get some gas.  We find ourselves in the middle of nowhere in Illinois and now perhaps the comic relief for some Harley riders sitting on the side of the parking lot, resting with a cold beverage. (it is still 85 degrees outside).  I walk past them to the bathroom, then Terron takes his turn.  As he comes out, one of the guys asks, “Excuse me sir.  What is that suit you’re wearing, made of?”  Terron replies that it’s Kevlar and then he asks, “Is it warm?”  Terron tells him it’s mesh and that it’s really not too warm.  But seeing them sitting on their bikes in sleeveless shirts and no helmets in sight, I’m guessing they were snickering as how we were suited up.  We ride always thinking safety first, fashion last.

Back on the road, I am now smiling at the orange hue beyond the corn fields.  And then my grin ends up ear to ear, watching hundreds upon hundreds of fireflies or “lightning bugs” as we called them as kids, darting and dancing in and out of the weeds on the side of the road and up and down the rows of corn. What a sight!

A few of them are flying rather high up, above my head. As I whiz by, a few of them really look like tiny shooting stars.  This takes me way back to childhood, having grown up in this region.

We make it to our motel by 11:00pm with a little work still to do.  M face shield is covered in bugs.  That needs to be cleaned!  I also tend to the bug bite I somehow got on my neck, right where the chin strap to my helmet goes!  Terron loads the new maps on his GPS and we sigh at how much road we need to cover tomorrow to make up for the broken gearshift arm today.

After a late night of visiting with family and friends, it’s great to sleep in today; no alarm.  I get up, grab a cup of my mother-in-law’s coffee, which is always great, always hot.  I get a load of laundry done and get some writing done, while catching up with my mother-in-law, Dani, and sister-in-law, Crystal.

Terron must get all those bugs and road grime off the bikes, so he’s outside with lots of suds, washing away.  After both bikes are clean, it’s then time for him to rip apart a bike (What is it with men always needing to take things apart?).  This time, it’s mine again, so that he can figure out why my heated hand grips are not working.

After days of sitting on my bike, I hit the road for a run, even though it’s 95 degrees outside!  I get a few miles in.  It feels good to get some exercise!

We run a few errands and then get a text from a friend that he’s off work and in the brewery up the street.  Sure, we’ll pop in for a beer!  We all grab a beer and I text Dani and Crystal and they walk over to join us.  Before long, Mark’s son, Keith, joins us and then his daughter Meg arrives with her wife Becky.  It’s really great to just sit and visit with this group.  Mark and Terron have known each other since high school and it’s just great to see him and catch up.

This is a local brewery that we’re and it does not serve food, so you’re allowed to bring in what you’d like.  Before long, Mark’s kids head next door and bring back sandwiches.

Terron is dead set on having Jim’s Ribs Haven. (infamous in Terron’s world)  He runs off to run that last errand of the day; buy a new GoPro mount for the bike and I order the ribs for dinner, asking the woman what she can offer me, a non rib-eater.  I place our order: 2 racks of ribs, French fries and smoked turkey.  Then the fun part; Mark drives me to pick up the food in his 1969 GTO!  This is a classic!  All original!  I laugh as I put my lap belt on!  This is truly old school!  Thanks Mark!

We head home to eat dinner and then move on to the next ‘must have’ back in Terron’s home town:  Whitey’s Ice Cream!  Crystal and I take orders and return with Turtle Sundays for the two of us, a Hot Fudge Moose Tracks Sunday for Dani and a Turtle Malt for Terron.  YUM!

I am so stuffed!  But I know this is the way it is every time we come back to Terron’s home town of Rock Island.  He always has a list of foods that he must eat, every time he’s here.   My food coma lulls me right to sleep, seconds after my head hits the pillow.

The alarm goes off at 7am and I can still hear the rain outside!  The dark clouds are still over us!  Okay, here we go again.  I add the liner to my pants, in some vain attempt at not sitting in a swimming pool on my seat today.  We saddle up and head east.

Today is not much of a sightseeing day, more of a “get from point A to point B” day.  We’ve got 650 miles ahead of us to reach Terron’s Mom’s house.

I am still sightseeing all the way though, catching glimpses of beautiful homesteads and farms, through absolute downpours through South Dakota.   I’m finding the various signs advertising museums rather intriguing.  There’s a Museum of Tractors and Museum of Religious Artifacts in South Dakota and later in Iowa I see a sign advertising the Museum of Danish America.  After about 2 hours of rain, we hit sunny skies!  And it’s hot!  It’s now 93 degrees and I can’t wait for that first gas stop so that I can take the liners back out of my pants!  BTW, that attempt to stay dry using the liner, was in vain.  I was still soaked!

We fill up the tanks and park over on the side of the station to strip off a few layers of clothing.  A man walking by excitedly asks, “Are you storm chasers?”  I look at him and say, “No, I think the storm is chasing us!”  He said, “Oh I saw the GoPro camera on the (Terron’s) motorcycle and figured you were out here chasing storms.”  Does he really think it would be a good idea to be chasing tornadoes, thunderstorms and lightning on motorcycles?  I think not.

Still chuckling over this exchange, Terron and I head south on I-29 and sure enough, about 45 minutes down the road, we’re back under a huge storm cell.  I’m watching the dark clouds ahead and around us and it seriously looks like a tornado could form at any second.  The winds are practically blowing me sideways across my lane.  I lean in and hold on tight to stay upright.  The rain is coming down hard!  It’s now rolling off my helmet, down the neck of my coat all the way down to my pants!  I’m soaked- again!  At this point, I find this situation that I’m in so hysterical, I start laughing uncontrollably.  My laughter is loud and just fills my helmet.

Just then I see a white truck passing me on my left and across the back of it, I read StormView Live.  Okay, the storm chasers are chasing this one, while we’re just trying to ride through it!

After an hour of rain, we’re back to the 93 degree mark, so I’m drying out nicely!  But man it’s hot!  At the next gas stop, Terron tells me that he barely saved the GoPro camera from bouncing down the highway.  He could see that it was jiggling on the mount on his windshield.  So, just as he was reaching around to see if it was falling out of the mount, the mount broke in two and the camera just lurched into his hand.  Whew!  Saved it!

Finally, after hours and hours in this heat, we finally hit Terron’s mom’s house in the Quad Cities and our favorite dinner:   Happy Joe’s Taco Supreme Pizza (my half vegetarian, of course!)   After dinner, we head over to a friend’s house to get some visiting in.  It’s our only chance to see Cathy, since she’s headed out of town in the morning.  So we stand in her kitchen with her boyfriend Mark until almost midnight laughing and sharing stories.  Yes, they stood with us in the kitchen, realizing that we’d been sitting on the bikes all day!

What a glorious day to wake up to!  The sun is shining; the temperature is warm, 78 degrees.  The little Greybull Motel we are in, offers coffee in the lobby, so I head straight there for some Joe.  I chat with the manager, Michelle, and look over the ‘small continental breakfast’ she told me about the night before.  I grab 2 coffees and tell Michelle we’ll be back for breakfast.  We sip our coffees while we pack up and then load the bikes.

While eating breakfast, Michelle and her husband John tell us all the scenery ahead we should definitely check out.  John is really a caverns man, he explains and says he’s now been to every one in the Mt. Rushmore area and suggests we try to see as many as we can.  The subject turns to wildlife and big horn sheep and mountain goats and I say these are the two animals I have yet to see in the wild, even after all the riding we’ve done up through Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory, not to mention Washington.  John maps a course for us out of Greybull, we thank and him and head to the bikes.

I slip my helmet and gloves on and start my bike and realize that I have no audio at all on the bike.  The CB does not work and this means I have no audio to listen to either.  I alert Terron, who then gets the tools out, takes off the seat and starts trouble shooting.  A few explicative and about 45 minutes later, he figures out that a connection came lose.   Just a screwdriver and it’s fixed.  Oh and by the way, he also realizes that he actually broke it the night before, trying to fix a different problem, which by the way, is still broken.

Oh well, we are now on the open road, under sunny skies and 78 degrees.  And when I say open road, I mean open road.  I’m amazed, when I realize that we are only the only motorized anything on the road for miles at a time.  And this is when I’m also staring at the passing scenery, thinking; “Who the heck decided there needs to be a road here? Why?  And who built it?”  And then I feel cold!  That 78 degrees disappeared within ten miles.  It’s now 50 degrees and my fingers are frozen!

This is now the second day in a row that I’m loving the scent in the air. I smell wildflowers!  There are so many of them.  I don’t know what they are, but I see lots of periwinkle and purple flowers and then many that are bright fuscia!   Then we enter the town of Basin, WY where the welcome sign proclaims “Lilac City of the World”.   Cool, my head swivels left, right, left, right as we drive through this little town, looking for lilacs.  Not one!  How odd.  Oh well, there are fields of flowers still ahead!

This is the Bighorn National Forest that we’re driving through now.  I don’t see any big horned sheep or mountain goats but I do see more pronghorn!  They look so graceful, grazing on the side of the road, barely looking up to see us go by.  Beyond them, there’s a full spectrum of red rock mountains all around us.  Every twisty turn of the road, reveals another carved section of earth.  The raging rivers here gouged the landscape over time.    Most of the water we ride alongside or cross over is running fast, and at times, white with rapids.  The far off mountainsides reveal many layers of rock and sediment, in varying shades of red and magenta.

The colors appear muted for a number of miles, but then transition into a vibrant, bright red.  Here, the layers are less apparent; it’s just red top to bottom.  And now when I look down at the Nowood River that we’ve been paralleling, I see that it’s no longer blue/green or clear water, it’s now a dark red, murky, muddy color.  After more than an hour of riding through this wonderfully chromatic spectrum of red rock, I see that the landscape is changing again.  There are now trees and green pastures and we cross Tensleep Creek.

Then I see Ten Sleep Veterinary Services, Ten Sleep Baptist Church, Ten Sleep Senior Citizens Center and the Ten Sleep Post Office.  Oh, this is a town called Ten Sleep!  I figure the name has some origin in Indian culture and I’m right.  Later when I look it up, I learn this little community was half way between two trading posts and the Indians measured distance by the number of “sleeps” it took to get to a location, and this community was ten sleeps between the two trading posts.

We depart Ten Sleep and move on toward Buffalo, WY.  The rock is no longer red, it’s gray and shaped like giant boulders.  After an hour of riding through these sleeping giants, we reach the point that we’re going to hop on I-90.  We stop for gas and stare at the skies ahead.  There are dark clouds, the sun is gone and I can see that we’re about to get wet, so we gear up.   This storm is big!  Terron checks radar on his phone and tells me we’re not outrunning this one, we’re running into it.   For the next 7 hours, we are soaked, despite our foul weather gear!   Strikes of lightning illuminate the dark skies all around us.  And it’s cold!  At another gas stop, I add glove liners, but it takes only minutes for those to also become soaked.  Thank goodness I’ve got a good audio book playing in my helmet; Tom Clancy’s Threat Vector.  That will keep my mind occupied, while I sit in a pool of water on my seat and the rain drips from my helmet down my back!

Finally, we turn off the interstate into the Black Hills National Forest and the road to Mt. Rushmore.  My dad, no matter where he is, always says, “Hey this looks like Wisconsin.”  I don’t always agree, but right now, if he were here, I know he would say this and I would agree!  The rock formations and green trees, do look like the Wisconsin Dells to me!  But it’s South Dakota and it’s beautiful, even in the rain, so lush and green.  Terron spots the turn for Crazy Horse and goes in.  It’s $10 to get in and he pays it, just to get closer.  But we are so soaked right now, we don’t even get off the bikes to go in the visitor center.  We just roll up, take a few pictures and move on.  Be sure to stare in awe at our $10 photos!

As we ride through into Mt. Rushmore, the rain lets up a little bit and again, we roll up, snap photos of the monument and move on.  My family travelled here on summer vacation when I was little, but this is Terron’s first time ever to see this.  We have a National Park pass, so we can go in, but Terron says, “I’m good.  Been here done that.  Let’s roll!”  I agree and we zoom off for more adventure.

Now we have a new mission:  get to Murdo, SD, where we earlier made a motel reservation, so we can get out of these wet clothes and get a hot meal.  GPS says we’ll be there at 8:30.  Something should still be open.  Along the way, I start seeing all the signs for Wall Drug.  There are so many, announcing everything you can see and buy and enjoy at Wall Drug.  But, we ride on past.  I hate missing Wall Drug, but I’m so miserably cold and wet, I just can’t stop now.

Down the road, we pass the sign that says Central Time Zone.  Doh!  Will anything be open at our hotel stop?  We check into the motel at 9:30PM and see a sign that says “Diner” across 2 parking lots.  The clerk says they stop serving at 10:00.  We park the bikes, run our bags up to the room and briskly walk to the diner.  We made it!  From the limited menu, we both order fried chicken, which totally underwhelms, but it is the first sit down, hot meal we’ve had since we left home three days ago!

When I get up to leave the diner, I literally leave a puddle on the seat!  I’m not kidding!  Thank goodness these are just plain, plastic diner booths.  Back in the room I try running the motel out of hot water during my shower!  But there’s still plenty for Terron, who went to the front desk to ask for a fan to help dry out our gear.  After showers, we turn the bathroom into a clothesline!  BTW, the clouds are still over us!  I hear thunder and the rain still pounding outside, as we drift off to sleep.

Another day and we’re off at the crack of 11:00am!  I love vacation!  No real schedule!  The goal for today is driving through Yellowstone and getting well into Wyoming to put us in a great position for Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Mammoth Site and the Badlands on Monday.  We turn off I-90 to hit the 2 lane road, toward the Tobacco Mountains.  These are dark, tall mountains laid out before us, nothing but the open road and green pastures between us and the mountains.  I really want a picture of the mountains, so I get on the CB and ask Terron to take a photo. (Unfortunately I forgot my camera!) I don’t think he hears me, so I take off a glove and wrangle my phone out of my tank bag and try to take a picture, but then we hit a stop sign and I figure it’s not worth dropping the phone, so I put it away and try to get my glove back on.  I take off from the stop sign, still struggling with the glove and my bike dies.  The oil light comes on.  I can’t get it restarted.  I yell into the CB, “My bike is dead.  My bike is dead.”  Terron pulls over on a little pull-out down the road and amazingly, I coast a good half mile to him.  We spend a few minutes working on it and get it started again and keep moving.  Whew!  Not a major problem.  (20 minutes down the road, I realize that my struggle with the glove caused me to hit the kill switch!  Ok no blonde jokes!  It happens!)  Now, moving down the two lane road again, in the middle of nowhere, I stare at the Tobacco Mountains.  This is beautiful country!  And we’re on our way to Yellowstone.

We’ve been here before, 3 years ago, also on our motorcycles, so this time it’s more relaxed. I have more time, it seems, to really take in the scenery.   The bison are everywhere!  Dozens of them, here and there, some off in the distance in herds, others lounging or grazing just fee from us, just off the road.  When I get that close view, I see that they’re shedding their winter coat.  Interesting, since I’m freezing right now!   I forget that this park has some altitude, averaging 8,000 feet.  Though the temperature never dropped below 48 degrees, it was cold to me!

A grizzly bear was hiding in the trees toward the East entrance and a moose was lounging along the road, appearing to pose for photographers walking up close, while a park ranger stood nearby to keep everyone moving along.  The most entertaining animal of all for me today, was the prairie dog!  There were so many, darting in and out of traffic; I don’t know how they do it!  At one point, I watched one dart around Terron’ s bike in front of me and then dart into oncoming traffic and turn back, just as it seems to hit the tire of a minivan!  So agile!  (And now Terron reminds me that they’re not all fast and agile since he spotted a few lying dead on the side of the road.)

Getting through the park definitely required some patience, through traffic and even a little bit of construction.  At one point, Terron rocked a gravel divot so hard that he said it launched him up off his seat!  I have to admit I chuckled at the site!  Seeing how it bit him, I avoided it!  Then another gravel patch and a smaller launch hit him, but this time, I also see a plastic bag flying under his tire.  I think, “Man, who is littering in this beautiful park?”  Then I see that it’s actually a bag of beef jerky Terron bought at the butcher in Seattle before he left.  So I bellow into the CB, “Hey your beef jerky just went flying!”  I see him quickly look around then he responds, “What?”  I repeated, “Your beef jerky went flying off the bike!”

Then, while Terron is looking for a place to turn around to get it, I see the cooler flying off the special carrier Terron made to hold it on his trailer hitch.   Then I yell into the CB; “And there goes the cooler!”, as I watch the cooler bounce off the carrier in the middle of a bridge over a creek, a diet Dr. Pepper now rolling toward my tire!  I stop in the middle of the bridge, flick on my hazard lights and try to kick the cooler off to the side to get it out of traffic so that I can walk back to retrieve it.  An older man from the SUV behind me, comes up, picks up all the pieces for me and moves them to side, as I see Terron go past me in the opposite direction to retrieve his precious bag of beef jerky!  We finally get all of the lost pieces back in our procession and Terron schools me on how to properly secure the cooler to it carrier.    Apparently I was the last one to use it earlier in the day!  Sheesh, I don’t even eat beef!

Before we leave the park through the East Entrance, we skirt the edge of Yellowstone Lake.  It’s just stunning and huge!  Now it’s time for fun, leaning through the curves of a winding canyon.  This road is along the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, created by the Buffalo Bill Dam.  What a canyon!  We rock and roll through the curves, leaning left, right, left, right!

Now the sun is beginning to set and we don’t want to fall into the same trap as last night.  There’s still a lot of road ahead.  We decide to get gas in Cody and at this point, have to make a decision on where to stop for the night.   We choose Greybull, an hour away and I call a motel for a reservation.  I get her last room!  I also ask where we can eat dinner when we get there.  She says, “Nothing’s open, honey. It’s Sunday in Greybull, Wyoming!”  So we pick up sandwiches in Cody and enjoy the glow of the sun reflecting on the mountains in front of us on our way to Greybull, passing through quaint little towns along the way.  My favorite is Emblem, with a standard city sign that reads:  Population 10, Elevation 4,449′.   All I see are 2 large farms, then a post office!  Terron jokes on the CB, “With only ten residents, I wonder if they just rotate who is the mayor.”

The Greybull M

otel, completely decked out in flowers greets us.  Inside the office, a young girl excitedly states, “You’re on a bike!”  I said, “Yes, my husband and I are on two bikes,” thinking she’s just excited to see a woman who rides.  Maybe, but really the statement is to confirm that we get a cold beer!  Yep, the Greybull Motel greets every biker with a cold beer upon check-in; Budweiser, Bud Light, or Coors Light!  So we settle in with a Coors Light and Bud, but I’d rather sip the wine I brought from home, so I pop that cork and we enjoy our buffalo chicken wrap sandwiches and Hot and Spicy Cheez Its!  I’ve never seen this flavor before; it’s okay.

Day 1 – Windy…Wet…Wild(life!)

We experienced all these things, in one, loooong day.  But first, allow me to go to the beginning.  My husband Terron and I agreed that we would not set an alarm this morning.  We would begin our trek to Key West when we woke up, leisurely.  No rush to run out the door.  Leisurely, however, turned out to be an understatement here.  I did not get to bed until 1am and didn’t sleep well at all.  Still, imagine my surprise when I woke up and the clock read 10:20!  Yikes!  I’d hoped to be on the road by now.  We ‘rushed’ around the house to get ready to go and finally suited up and drove off into the afternoon sun, our great next door neighbors taking photos of us. (Thanks Karen & Rick) We pulled out at the crack of 1:00pm to ride more than 500 miles to Missoula, Montana!  Just about 10 miles from our house, in complete stop and go traffic, Terron gets on the CB; “How far are we from home?”  Oh, I know what’s next.  I’ve been married to this man for almost 25 years now, so I calmly say 20 minutes and ask’ “Why?” Gadget man Terron, who’s motorcycle is rather ‘farkled up’ says, “I left an important electronic at home!”  And so, as we pull back to the house 30 minutes later, we grab the part and Karen takes our ‘…and they’re off, again!’ photos.  (BTW, a “farkle” is a term common among adventure motorcyclists. Enthusiasts will “farkle up” their motorcycles with aftermarket accessories such as radar detectors, GPS units, tall windscreens, steering stabilizers, carbon fiber bits, cushy aftermarket seats, and so on.  Terron has a lot!  I’ll post our list of farkles another day.)

Okay finally, the adventure is underway, now at the crack of 2:30pm!  We should be in Idaho by now!  We finally get out of Seattle traffic and hit the highway.  And it’s now raining hard!  It was a bit wet and cold, crossing Snoqualmie Pass.  I planned for this, starting in my heavy gloves, but my fingers still ended up numb by the time we reached the other side.  No worries, I know that the other side of the mountains will be warmer.  The temperature reading on my bike climbs from 50 degrees crossing the pass, to 70 degrees in no time at all.

At Ellensburg, we turn off Interstate 90 and hit the two-lane.  I smile wide, the beautiful blue skies above me, broken up with fluffy, cumulus clouds and nothing but farmland and rolling hills all around to keep my gaze.  Riding through areas like this takes me back to my childhood and the wonderful days my family spent at Grandma and Grandpa Whitaker’s place, a large farm, down a gravel road, Whitaker Lane, outside Hannibal, Missouri.  A few miles down the road here, a young boy playing outside hears the motorcycles coming down the otherwise empty road and runs to the top of a farm implement and waves wildly at us, as we zoom by.  I give him a huge wave back!  Oh to be a carefree kid again.  Wait, we are at this moment, two carefree kids going where the road takes us!

Eventually we hit the Palouse, an area I’ve really only read about, never seen for myself.  It’s amazing!  Rolling hills of golden wheat, flashing left and right, like squares of a quilt under those broken blue skies.  The colors from one hill to the next just continue to amaze me from brown, to gold to bright green and yellow.  The scenery lives up to what I’ve read, but I don’t recall ever reading about the winds!  Boy is it windy here.  I see Terron almost leaning horizontal to keep his bike straight on the road.  He later tells me that I looked like too was at a 15 degree angle, trying to keep my bike upright in these cross winds.  It rally made me laugh and chuckle all the way to the the Idaho border, where my smile only widened, as I look down at Lewiston, sprawled out in the valley below

, cut up by rivers and water.

Here, we miss the turn to Missoula!  So, we pull over in Lewiston for gas and I add the liners to my jacket and gloves.   It’s now 7:30pm.  The sun is still shining.  It’s still warm.  We’re still wide awake. But should we find a motel, even though we’re far short of our goal of hitting Missoula?  Nope, we gas up and decide to push on.  Now on highway 12, we enter the Bitterroot Wilderness area.  It is the third largest wilderness in the lower 48 and slightly larger than the size of Delaware.   It’s amazing!   We’re riding all along a river that at times is raging and other times, just lazily moving along.  The mountains tower on either side of us.  As the sun sets, the orange glow beyond silhouettes of trees ahead of me is majestic and the smell of campfires is in the air.

But now it’s getting dark and with each sign announcing the miles until Missoula, I wonder if this was a good idea.  I think, “Oh boy we should have stayed in that hotel back at Orofino, so we could ride through this amazing wilderness tomorrow, after sunrise when I can really appreciate its beauty.”  Then I look at the temperature gauge on my dashboard and see that it’s steadily dropping (the lowest we hit was 35 degrees) and I believe it would be colder in the morning, so now is good!  Let’s keep riding.  We slow our pace, knowing that we need to look out for wildlife.

When that first deer darts out in front of us, we both say we should have found the first hotel and stopped for the night!  But we’re deep into the wilderness now, so we keep going and the deer keep darting in front of us!  One poor guy was so confused by our headlights he darted back and in forth in the middle of the road, to the point that Terron locked up his rear brakes!  Terron says those new tires kept him from going down.  We both think that deer came within inches of him, at his hard braking from a speed of 40 mph. I could actually smell his brake pads!!  After this encounter, our adrenaline’s really pumping and we slowed our speed down another 10-15 mph.

A few more miles down the road, we spot a lodge.  We roll down the gravel road to see if they might just have a room.  Nope.  The clerk tells us this time of year they’re always full.  Next closest place she says is 20 more miles.  Oh and she adds, “Watch out for them critters!  We’ve got deer and moose out there.”   “Yes”, we tell her, “We’ve seen lots of deer.”   Then I say to Terron, “Critters? I call squirrels and raccoons critters.  Deer and moose are not critters!”  Those are called giant obstacles to be feared on a motorcycle, in the dark, travelling 50 miles an hour!   By the time we travelled the 164 miles through the Bitterroot, we’ve dodged a dozen deer and a bear!  And we’re not even to Missoula!

20 miles down the road, we spot the lodge she mentioned.  We pull in and again, no vacancy. The bar was sure hopping but we keep moving!  Finally, the town of Lolo!  Terron yells into the CB mic, “Days Inn!”   It’s well after midnight, but now I now have a hot shower to warm my frozen toes, a cup of hot tea to warm the rest of me and soft pillows to lay my freshly washed head of hair!

The day is finally here!  It’s after midnight – I should be in bed – I’m not.  I’m writing this, actually starting a blog on the eve of the longest vacation I’ve taken.  I’ve traveled farther, around the globe, but that was by plane.  This time I’m saddling up on my Honda ST1300, nearly identical to the one my husband rides and we’re driving from corner to corner; from Seattle to Key West, Florida and back!  I started this blog so you come along with me for the ride!