Sunday, August 5, 2012

Over 1000 miles on the back of a bike!!!

Earlier this year Erwin called Loren and wanted to plan a long weekend trip on the motorcycles out to Galena, IL--so we went for it..and well now we could be hooked.
There is nothing like riding on the back of a cycle to really see the countryside!!!
With much trepidation we purchased rain gear and planned our packing to take only the necessary items and then off we went. Only about 1 hour into the trip we had a minor issue of a loose bolt on Erwin's bike--but soon fixed and back on the road. We stopped at The Little Brown Church--cute little place. Continuing down the road we entered into Dubuque about 4:30 in the afternoon--another learning experience--big city downtown driving!! Temperature was in the 90's--but we made it through and crossed the bridge over the Mississippi in Illinois!!
A few more winding roads and we had mastered our first 9 hour day of riding--what a great feeling of accomplishment that was!!!!
Our wonderful travel guides has a great condo booked for us and a couple little day trips. Went for some delicious cheese curds in Praire Du Chen, Wisconsin,all the little tourist shops in Galena,
walked along the Mississippi in Dubuque,
toured through an antique shop owned by Frank from American Pickers, and a unique biker resturant called Poopies!! Great job tour guides!!! We found one quilt shop on the Galena stip--Phat 1/4's. And then for Jan we found 2 geocaches. The one in Wisconsin was very easy--but it took us 3 tries in Illinois--we were even looking under a bridge in possible homeless home area!! But we found them!!
Here she is looking for more spots to search!! So it was time to head home and of course the weather forecast was for extreme heat index temps--but off we went. We were on mile 870 of our trip and the heat finally got to me and I had to really dig deep into my happy place and tough it out to the next stop--going through Algona and seeing 102 degrees on the bank sign didn't help either!!! But 2 glasses and water and a 20 oz. glass of ice later and the rest of the trip home was uneventful. Loren and I are really proud of ourselves that we kept up with some seasoned riders and totally had fun and learned a lot about ourselves. We can't wait for the next trip somewhere on the backroads of America!!!

2 comments:

marg said...

what amazing fun! I never dreamt you 2 would turn into bikers!

Roberta said...

Now that you made it that far, you can come a little farther to Milwaukee, take the ferry across Lake Michigan, get off at Muskegon, and come visit us. We had two other couples come here on there Harleys over the Fourth of July. We had a wonderful air conditioned place for them to stay. It's a standing offer!