We covered 4400+ miles in seven day on this ride. Leaving Panama City FL to Mt Rushmore - over the upper peninsula of Michigan - across Mackinac bridge - down the eastern side of Lake Michigan and home.
Three of us started out on the trip me - twowheelsonly (Allen Woods) on a 06 ST and a friend of his on a 98 Connie. His friend dropped out the second day because of a sore back.
The whole trip was completed on back roads except for maybe 200 miles or so. The advantage the great gas mileage we got. We averaged 300 miles before even getting to one bar. The highest I got was 321 miles when I put in 6.256 gals (I'm figuring that I could have gotten almost 400 miles to a tank on that leg)
For the most part the ride was uneventful but fun, which was a good thing. There were two events that were memorable. The first was at the first camp site (Lake Charles state park in Northeast AR - I don't recommend this park for camping - too crowded and not good for tents). Anyway had found a relatively quiet section and had gone to take a shower - upon returning we came back to our private Jerry Springer show
. I mean the full blown show complete with the worst southern draw I've ever heard (I thought that they only talked like that on TV & I've heard plenty here in LA - Lower Alabama) They got that started about 9:30 and it went on till about 11:00 pm - the really bad part was they started up at 6:15 am (luckily we were up breaking camp), but they were slamming car/truck door speeding off/coming back doing it all over again (all this happened about 20 ft from my tent)
The second major event happened was when were riding in MN being two wheat fields (I mean to the horizon kinda of wheat fields), the road was crowned and I was in the lead. I was doing my normal scanning procedures 4 & 12 secs ahead - well out of the corner of my eye I spot bambi starting to run across the road. I hit the brake as soon I recognized it (I don't think it much good as it was already starting to cross the road), but it came so close to the bike that I didn't see it's feet hit the ground in front of me as it cross my nose (the rider behind who saw it pop up out of the tall grass thought I had hit it). It happened so fast that I never got the adrenalin rush after the fact.
While in MN we did stop at Aerostich - I was surprised at what I saw. I was expecting a fancy building etc - well you can see below that actual store entrance.
Picture #1 - in frontof Mt Rushmore, #2 riding across South Dakota, #3 Aerostich, #4 first view of Lake Superior, #5 Camping next to Lake Michigan, #6 Mackinac Brdige, #7 a suprise as we cam across Lincoln's birthplace
We averaged 600+ miles days with the last day being 809 (we were planning stopping, but I got a ticket in Indianapolis and got mad and said I'm heading home, still did it on state highways, so that made for a very long day.
Three of us started out on the trip me - twowheelsonly (Allen Woods) on a 06 ST and a friend of his on a 98 Connie. His friend dropped out the second day because of a sore back.
The whole trip was completed on back roads except for maybe 200 miles or so. The advantage the great gas mileage we got. We averaged 300 miles before even getting to one bar. The highest I got was 321 miles when I put in 6.256 gals (I'm figuring that I could have gotten almost 400 miles to a tank on that leg)
For the most part the ride was uneventful but fun, which was a good thing. There were two events that were memorable. The first was at the first camp site (Lake Charles state park in Northeast AR - I don't recommend this park for camping - too crowded and not good for tents). Anyway had found a relatively quiet section and had gone to take a shower - upon returning we came back to our private Jerry Springer show
. I mean the full blown show complete with the worst southern draw I've ever heard (I thought that they only talked like that on TV & I've heard plenty here in LA - Lower Alabama) They got that started about 9:30 and it went on till about 11:00 pm - the really bad part was they started up at 6:15 am (luckily we were up breaking camp), but they were slamming car/truck door speeding off/coming back doing it all over again (all this happened about 20 ft from my tent)The second major event happened was when were riding in MN being two wheat fields (I mean to the horizon kinda of wheat fields), the road was crowned and I was in the lead. I was doing my normal scanning procedures 4 & 12 secs ahead - well out of the corner of my eye I spot bambi starting to run across the road. I hit the brake as soon I recognized it (I don't think it much good as it was already starting to cross the road), but it came so close to the bike that I didn't see it's feet hit the ground in front of me as it cross my nose (the rider behind who saw it pop up out of the tall grass thought I had hit it). It happened so fast that I never got the adrenalin rush after the fact.
While in MN we did stop at Aerostich - I was surprised at what I saw. I was expecting a fancy building etc - well you can see below that actual store entrance.
Picture #1 - in frontof Mt Rushmore, #2 riding across South Dakota, #3 Aerostich, #4 first view of Lake Superior, #5 Camping next to Lake Michigan, #6 Mackinac Brdige, #7 a suprise as we cam across Lincoln's birthplace
We averaged 600+ miles days with the last day being 809 (we were planning stopping, but I got a ticket in Indianapolis and got mad and said I'm heading home, still did it on state highways, so that made for a very long day.
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Good show.