The plan:
1. Load the bikes on the trailer and pull them for four days straight to Missoula, MT.
2. Unload the bikes, put the truck and trailer in storage and ride the bikes around the Pacific NW starting with Glacier NP.
3. Attend the NGW Western Rally which determined the dates for the entire trip.
4. Load the bikes back on the trailer and pull them for four days straight until we get home.
Mission accomplished we left on June 19th and got home the evening of July 13th.
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HA! I bet you were expecting to see some pictures, weren't you?
Well, between my pictures and Terrie's I've got about 2000 of them to sort through so be patient. As I get them ready I'll be posting them in batches as my busy (tongue in cheek) schedule allows.
First four days:
We drove in approximately 620 mile increments in order to reach Missoula from Raleigh a distance of 2500 miles in the four days that we allotted. Because it was all about getting there we didn't take too much time for pictures but we have a few. Some were taken from inside the truck at speed so please pardon if the foreground is a bit blurred and there are reflections from the glass.
First stop, other than for gas, was a rest stop along I-77 in Virginia. Since we were in the heart of the Appalachians we took a picture to show we were going from the major Eastern mountain chain to the major western mountain chain(s).
I thought the designer's placement of the dead trees in order to show interest and contrast in the layout was brilliant.
We buzzed through the rest of Virginia and West Virginia except for one incident. We stopped at a rest stop in WV near Huntington for a break. As we were merging with traffic on I-64 leaving the rest stop Terrie realized that she didn't have her purse. Oh Joy! We drove 4 miles to the next exit merged back onto I-64 Eastbound and after 10 miles flipped our direction again and returned to the rest stop where after careful examination of the women's restroom her purse wasn't found. As I was taken mental inventory of the damage to our finances that could occur Terrie questioned a rest stop worker if anyone had turned in a purse. Joyfully someone had and we retrieved our property along with our sanity. All told this little episode cost us about 45 minutes and 20 miles of extra driving. As a result Terrie wasn't allowed to take her purse out of the truck for the rest of the trip except to put it in her bike when we unloaded in Missoula.
The second day out we passed through St Louis so we took the obligatory picture of the arch. Its a tough drive through downtown with several state highways and a couple of interstates all merging to cross a couple of bridges. Ad the construction in and its a tense stretch of road.
We pulled over for gas somewhere in the middle of Missouri and this barn in a wheat field was adjacent to the station so we took the picture. By this time the traffic around St. Louis was a distant memory.
The rest of Missouri and all I Iowa along the Missouri River was uneventful and un-photgraphic. But we stopped in Mitchell SD on our third day to view the world famous Corn Palace. The Corn Palace is civic auditorium that the locals decorate with various murals inside and out using naturally colored corn grown specially for the job. They use a different theme every year. Unfortunately, they were getting ready to do major renovations to the building and most of the murals had been removed and the building was surrounded by construction equipment. We did get some pictures of one outside wall that they were retaining the murals on for as long as possible but even those had some of the decoration removed.
Western SD is all about the plains. Some plant that we tried several times to get the name of by asking the locals but never could get it identified was in full bloom. With myriad yellow flowers on a leggy light green plant it covered the prairie in chartreuse which contrasted nicely with the darker green of the prairie grasses, throw in numerous prairie potholes and you had an interesting landscape.
One of the things that the folks in SD provide to keep you occupied while crossing their state are the Wall Drug signs. We crossed the SD border from Iowa on I-29 and from there to the junction with I-90 west to Wall, SD we counted 88 Wall Drug signs, + or - six or so. Finally we arrived.
Actually we blew right by Wall because our destination for the night was Spearfish.
We had an interesting experience in Spearfish. We stayed at a Best Western that had an unusual layout. Our first floor room had a door that opened onto the parking lot and one the opened on to and interior hall. Around 11pm while I was sleeping very soundly, because up to this point I had been doing most of the driving, Terrie stepped out to the parking lot to get some pain meds because of a wound on the instep of her foot that was bothering her. She had barred the interior door with the lever and latch but the exterior door was unlatched but had locked behind her. When she tried to get back into the room her card key wouldn't work. So she had the desk clerk make her a new key. That one wouldn't work either. So they made another one. That one wouldn't work either. The desk clerk said they had been having problems with that door lock over the last then days or so. Terrie knocked on the door but I never heard it. The desk clerk called the maintenance man who took some time to arrive. When he got there he tried the card keys without success. He finally opened the door using a push rod inserted into a hole on the underside of the key reader. Terrie finally got to bed after midnight.
We used Best Western gift cards gotten by cashing in our credit card rewards points to pay for most of our BW stays. The reason I mention this is because when we checked in to the Spearfish BW the afternoon clerk did not correctly credit our room stay to the gift cards. We woke up early and after breakfast checked out where Terrie noticed that our room was billed to our credit card and not the gift cards. Essentially we were paying twice for the same room. The night clerk, the same on that helped with the door lock, couldn't find the paper work the afternoon clerk filed and he couldn't find where he rand the gift cards. Finally after much searching he found the gift card, depleted of funds, in the trash cans and eventually found the paper work that had been mis-filed. However, he was at a loss as how to correct the error. We had to wait half an hour until the day manager arrived to sort out the mess. Altogether we lost about 45 minutes of prime road time on our way to our final destination with the truck, Missoula. I wasn't in a good mood for quite awhile.
But the Montana country side began to make up for it. We saw numerous antelope in the pastures feeding early in the morning. Interestingly this was the only day we spotted antelope. Some picture of MT.
Enough of the pictures from the truck. The next installment will be while were on the bikes.
