Home!

Well we are home safe and sound. The last two days were spent running down to see Shannon, Kevin, Tony and Dallas in Lewiston, Id. and saying Hi, and then driving through Washington to home today. We made it home about 3:00 and are just relaxing. Our Baby's (dogs) and fine and love having us back. We sure did miss them.

All in all it was a great trip. We did 7860 miles in 17 days and met some awesome people in New York. (All that attended were just the friendliest people. We miss them already)

We got to see New York and Washington D.C. and the Shenandoah Valley just felt like home to me.

We missed all the bad weather coming and going. We only had 1 rain event going into Nashville and it was no big deal.
I got to hit the missing states, so I have driven my motorcycle in all lower 48 states and D.C. I am going to Alaska Later this year.

I learned that I am still over packing. For me, I can get by with 2 pairs of Jeans, 4 shirts and three underpants, and 4 pairs of socks and that would be good for any trip. The rest is stuff that Lori needed and spare gear.

The 1300 is an awesome bike, It just runs and runs and runs. I never added any oil, just gas the whole trip. It has a sweet spot at 77-80 mph (actual, not indicated) when you hit it the bike just surges forward and settles into a sweet purr that can go on, and on, until you run out of gas. It just runs effortless.

Carving the canyons coming down LOLO pass was such fun and the General tire in no way hampered the bikes handling at all.

I am sorry that I have not responded to all he comments on the pictures and the blog, but in my defense, I have been busy riding. I will try and respond in the next couple of days. I am relaxing tonight.

Thank you all for following along. We are already looking forward to two more major trips for next year. The meet and greet for sure and one other. Maybe a cross Canada trip.

Yellowstone

A quick (ya right) trip up to Yellowstone and a day of siteseeing and in to Bozeman for the night.

The trip up was dry and it was nice to see the scenery start to change back into the northwest style that we are so familiar with. We went through a little town named Shoshoni and through a few tunnels and followed the Wind River for a while.

It reminded me a lot of the Moab area. While driving along we ran past a group of rafts running the river and we just had to stop for a minute to check them out.


Once into the park, both Lori and I were surprised that it was so high up. Most of the park is over 7000 feet and it crosses the continental divide at over 8200 feet.  There are a lot of animals and it is very pretty to look at, but we are used to all that. There is still a lot of snow and it is causing the rivers to be running high and hard. You can really tell once you get down a bit lower. We did all the usual things like stopping at Old Faithful and looking at the paint pots and taking a few pictures of the wild animals. (those are the ones in the vehicles. Compared to them, the animals in the park are tame. LOL)

Time to seriously head for home in the AM. 

Almost to Yellowstone

We left nashville and headed west through the corner of Arkansas and they curved north. There are some really nice roads in the area. They curve up hills and around corners and are just a blast to drive. Carving the highways at 60 is as much fun to me as the slow tight turns.

There was one real sad part that got to me. I was coming into a corner and there was a dead deer in the road and right next to it on the shoulder was a young fawn. Not more than 20 lbs. It must have been the mother that got hit. When I came up the fawn turned and ran back into the woods. It made me real sad to see that

Up he road a little farther we came through Mammoth Spring Arkinsas and saw a great little waterfall. We had to stop for a few moments.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful just driving and having fun.


We stopped for the night at Fort Scott Kansas and had dinner at a local diner. All the people were real friendly and inquisitive as to where we came from and where we are going to. We did have to do laundry again. Funny how the clean clothes never seem to last long when you only have 3 outfits. :-)

This Morning we left Fort Scott and headed for Wichita and points west. It was hot and dry and boring. If you ever get the chance to drive through Kansas, think twice. It is mind numbing.

As we got to the west side of the state and started north through Colorado the weather turned nasty. There were real dark clouds and you could see the rain falling around us. We got hit with a sprinkle for just a couple of minutes, but we twisted and turned and missed all the rest of it. The clouds were real ominous. It kept me looking up, looking for a twister to start forming. One minute it was in the mid 90's and clear and the next, the temp had dropped by 35 degree's and it was windy. It seriously reminded me of the scene from the movie Twister when in Wichita it was calm and quiet and then all of a sudden the wind picked up and the twister was there tearing things up. I kept looking up as much as watching the road.

We are now in Cheyenne, Wy and have 6450 miles on the bikes. We are going to head through Cody in the morning and go through Yellowstone national park on the way home.

It has been a really great trip, but I am ready to be home and I really miss Tinkerbell and Callie and Abby.

DC and beyond

It is so hard to keep up with everything in your mind. So much has happened.

Lori left for the airport and The 3 of us took off for Washington DC for the day to sightsee. We got in around 11:00 and parked at Union Station for the day. We went down and got a subway ticket and headed out to Arlington Cemetery to look around. We saw the 3 major highlights there and a bit more. We went by the Kennedy grave site and got to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the unknowns (as it is called today), we saw the site of the space shuttle astronauts and also Robert E. Lee's house. That to me is the most interesting part of the cemetery. The fact that he was considered a traitor to his country and they started the cemetery in his front yard to make sure that he never came back home. from there we literally walked the whole length of the mall. We started at the Vietnam memorial and went to the Lincoln memorial. They have the reflection pool all tore up again and doing something with it. The Washington monument is as always and we walked from there all the way back to Union Station. All in all it was too much. We were all worn out after all that walking.

We left DC right in the middle of rush hour and we got to see the white house a bit as we were stuck in traffic right in front of it.

We finally got out of town and headed towards the Shanendoah Valley and just relaxed and enjoyed the ride. When we finally stopped for the night we relaxed and sat out in front of our room and watched the firefly's. It was cool and the first time Lori had ever seen a real firefly in person.

This morning we left and headed SW and just cruised along having a good time.until late in the day the clouds opened up and dumped on us for 100  miles straight. It finally let up right before we got into Nashville.

We did have one guy that got bit by Karma. He was tring to pass everyone and cutting people off. He tried to cut into the middle of the 3 of us and Lori would not let him in. He finally got around by cutting off a truck and we didn't see him again until about 20 minutes later he was sitting backwards on the side of the road with his car all smashed up. He had cut off another Semi and didn't quite clear. Gee bummer... LOL

We are stopped for the night just west of Nashville. Tomorrow we head for Arkansas and head NW through Kansas on our way to Cody Wyoming.

New York

We have now spent 2 days touring New York City and it was exhausting! I would rather ride 15 hours straight that stand in that line going out to the Statue of Liberty. Once out there it was fine, but the line...

We took a bus tour to hit the highlights of the city and then went back to see more on our own. The transit is ok, but confusing for a newbie to the area. We have to get a shuttle from the hotel to Newark Penn station, then take a New Jersey transit train to New York Penn Station, then the subway to the various spots we wanted to see.

All in all, we went to and saw;
The Empire State Building, including the top 102nd floor besides the normal observitory.
The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Wandered through Central Park and also took a carriage ride through the park.
Shopped at Macy's and I promised Lori we could go to Tiffany's on 5th also.
We ate local food at a neighborhood deli. (Good Pastrami!)
We toured through all 5 Borough's of N.Y.
We went to the observitory overlooking ground zero and saw all the new construction.
Saint Patrick and Saint Thomas's church's (nothing like at home.)
Rockefeller center.
We stopped at the bull on Wall street.
We went through Times Square.
We got to see the flatiron building. (first skyscraper constructed, 22 floors...)


I think that is about it.

Tomorrow morning early we head for D.C. to look around before heading West.

New Jersey!

The three of us left Lake George around 8 am and arrived in New Jersey just before noon. There were couple of quick sprinkles, but nothing serious.

The trip down was pretty uneventful. I was in one of those heightened states where everything was brighter and smelled fresher and the music was great and I was just enjoying life. It was probably in part from meeting new people and having a good time with them. Or it could have been from the double shot Mocha followed by a triple Grande White Mocha. LOL

We got our room and relaxed for all of 30 minutes before we decided to go for a walk. It was about a mile to get to Newark Penn station and from there we went out to Liberty airport to pick up Lori. Just as we got into the airport it just started dumping rain. People were running in totally soaked after just 5 seconds in the rain.

Lori's flight in arrived about an hour late and the baggage trucks were shut down because of the flooding from all the rain, so we got back to the room a little later than we had figured. We decided to eat dinner and just relax and enjoy each others company.

The shuttle driver from the Hampton Inn (Tony)had told us about a local diner that had good food, so we decided to try it. It was only about 4 blocks down so we decided to walk again.

Well, Tony lied...

It was one of the best meals I have had in a very long time. It started with corn chowder and then a nice dinner salad that could be an entree in another restaurant. They then brought our main courses and I had the Memphis BBQ spareribs. They were honestly the best ribs I can remember. They were dry rubbed and slow cooked and not overcooked. I was in  heaven. I tried the fries and coleslaw that came with them and just put them aside. All I needed was the ribs.

The Lori's and Mark all had various pasta dishes and none of them (Including Mark) could finish them. They had to get doggy bags to go. We enjoyed the dinner so much we ordered their homemade cheesecake to go.

The best part was the price. Dinner for the 4 of us including drinks, soup, salad, entree, and desert for all 4 was right at $100. A great deal for the quality and quantity of food. If there was a place like this at home, I would eat there all the time.

It is called Top's Diner and it is at 500 Passaic Ave, East Newark, New Jersey. If you ever get into the area, stop by it will be well worth it.

Time for us to relax and get some sleep so we can run around the city all day tomorrow.

Chao for now...

Ice cream!

Today we decided to run up to Vermont to visit the Ben and Jerry's Ice cream factory.

Mark, Lori, Me, Bryan, Tony,  Michaeleen, Roger,and his almost bride (they are getting married in Niagra Falls tomorrow) all took off at 8A.M. to see the factory. Conrad had laid out a route through the mountains, and as you know, I can't leave well enough alone, so I changed it. We rode up the west side of lake George (again.) and crossed over Lake Champlain on a small ferry. It was really just a barge with a tug attached, but it was still fun and chance to get off the bikes for a few minutes. From there we headed northeast through the Adirondack mountains towards the factory. They were great roads for riding, in that they were nice and curvy and major up and downhills. But they were also some of the roughest roads I have ever encountered. There were grooved and cracks and frost heaves and everything you could imagine on the roads including some locals straight out of the moonshining era. LOL

 The whole area is beautiful and we will have to come back to spend some serious time here when we retire.

We got into the Ice Cream factory and took the tour and had a good time. Mark was smart and didn't even eat the place out of ice cream. It would be hard to do anyway, they make 27000 pints a day.

We were running a litle late and had to get back to the Lake George area for the picnic, so we just hit the hwy (with one small turnaround, LOL) and headed out. It was hot by then anyway. Way too hot to be going slow.

We got back in time and had some delicious Brats and Hotdogs on the grill. (Thanks Will!)
There were awards given out and then we played a game of bingo for the door prizes. That done, a lot of picture taking was in order and we headed back to the room to pack up for the trip to New York City tomorrow.

We pick up Mark's Lori in the afternoon and start to see the city. I hope it is a little cooler there!

I should be able to post again tomorrow....