We rode 4800 and some odd miles in 9 days through 10 states excluding Indiana. We rode parts of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, Wisconsin, upper Michigan and down across the Mackinac bridge into lower Michigan and home. We rode a little over 700 miles on the last day and quite a few miles on most days but we never made the 1000 miles in 24 hours to get us into the Iron Butt club. Maybe next time.
We did ride the Beartooth highway and all five entrances and adjoining roads into and out of Yellowstone Park and saw nearly all the paved areas of that park. We rode through Grand Teton Park and the "Highway to the Sun" in Glacier National Park and crossed the "continental divide" so many times we lost count of it. We had a fairly close encounter with a bison in Yellowstone who appeared perfectly happy with the prospect of walking right over my valk and myself and I was very glad traffic allowed me to move before that happened. We saw mountain goats, bison, a bear (grizzly?) tons of antelope, muledeer, elk and whitetail, a moose, prairie dogs and lots of eagles. We rode across open range land with cows across the roads. At one point we rounded a corner and had cattle across most of our lane and an oncoming SUV in the other lane. Andy was able to squeeze through while leaned over in the corner but one of the cows did try to kick him as he rode through and I followed him.
We had our wheels within a few feet of snow on many occasions and rode a section of the “Highway to the Sun” which was just one lane of mud, dirt and rocks and several sections of the Beartooth were that way also. What a blast.
We had an approaching RV’s trailer tire blow on the road between Cody WY and Yellowstone which showered us with tire parts one of which hit Andy in the hand. Bruised him a little but no broken skin. That road between Cody and Yellowstone is awesome but all the bent guardrails tell you that some people have had bad days there.
Only about 350 miles of rain out of 4800 miles ridden so that wasn't bad. We got in a storm in South Dakota where the cross winds were bad enough we had to lay on our tank bags to keep them from blowing off and of course we rode the Mackinac Bridge in a storm yesterday just after daylight on our way home.
We rode US highway 2 through open range cattle and Indian lands from Montana to Michigan. According to my GPS our average moving speed for the trip was 58 mph and our top speed during the trip was ???, sorry, I’m going to leave that one out. Most of the time our gas mileage was pretty bad because of the speeds and mountains, his lowest was 22 MPG and mine was 25 MPG. We carried a gas can on our way home and the running joke was that we rode to Montana to get gas for Andy's lawnmower.
The only mechanical problems we had on the trip were a broken speedometer on Andy's valk (broken cable?) and we had to tighten his handlebar risers up once. We moved the GPS to his bike after the speedometer died on the way out and keep the hammer down.
We did get matching "fast driving awards" in Montana but some days you’ll have that I guess. We saw lots of cool places and met some good people. Idaho roads were awesome as were many that we rode and we found some damn good food at Ignight Lounge in Jackson Hole Wyoming and the Motel “Buffalo Bill” had built in 1902 in Cody Wyoming. The “Buffalo Bill” museum and firearms museum which are under the same roof in Cody Wyoming were worth the trip alone.
What a ball.
Mike
I'll post some pics later.
